


The Return of Emile Leopold Locque

by Artaud_Disciple



Category: For Your Eyes Only (1981), James Bond (Movies), James Bond - Ian Fleming
Genre: Abduction, Adventure, Assassination, F/M, Humor, Intrigue, Iraq, Love, belgium - Freeform, strong female character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-04
Updated: 2020-10-15
Packaged: 2021-02-23 09:30:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 33
Words: 107,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23009359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artaud_Disciple/pseuds/Artaud_Disciple
Summary: A sequel to the film "For Your Eyes Only," in which Bond finds that the hit man he presumed to be dead, Emile Leopold Locque, is alive and holding a woman captive. However, nothing is as it seems and Locque presents a revisionist history of James Bond's previous mission, and a confusing sequence of events brings causes two bitter enemies to fight for the same cause.
Relationships: James Bond/Bibi Dahl, James Bond/Bill Tanner, James Bond/Emile Leopold Locque, James Bond/Eve Moneypenny, James Bond/M, James Bond/Melina Havelock
Kudos: 1





	1. Brussels

Outside the door of Chief of Staff Tanner’s office, agent James Bond put his hand in his pocket and drew out, of all things, a pistachio nut shell. His lips turned up slightly at this calling card from his friend, the Greek smuggler Milos Columbo. How in hell had it found its way here?

Feeling Miss Moneypenny’s eyes on him, he fumbled with the file folder containing his report, gave her growing smile a slight, humorous bow, then placed a hand on the knob and entered the dark, maple-lined room. Tanner was behind his desk, puffing on his pipe and looking at Bond expectantly.

Despite appearances, Bond often returned from a mission with a sense of uneasiness—missions were never really over—but this particular one bothered him enormously. He could not put a finger on what was causing his agitation, so uncharacteristic of him. No, rather, he could: that moment on the cliff, when he had tossed the dove pin into Locque’s car and the henchman had caught it, startled, and looked down at it uncomprehendingly in his hand, as if he had never seen it before.

Yes, that was it. That moment with Locque was eating at Bond. It did not make sense—seeing that pin should have told Locque his fate, but the killer had merely looked confused. Instead, the audible give of the rocks beneath the pinned car had made Locque look up with wide eyes, realizing. Bond had to admit that the toss of the pin had not given him the satisfaction of terrifying Locque; Locque’s reaction had perplexed Bond then and it perplexed him now. Enraged at this reaction to the pin, Bond had then kicked the car even as Locque was on his way over the cliff. Bond had gotten his revenge, but he had wanted more, a longer silent plea from Locque, more fear, more pain. Damn him, anyway!

“Good morning, 007.” Tanner took Bond’s report from him and tossed it aside without a glance, then leaned back in his chair. He was studying Bond in a way that the agent did not like; he wondered if Tanner had ordered a psychological review, and inwardly groaned.

This mission to recover the ATAC had changed him forever, Bond knew it. That kick at Locque’s car was not like him, and he wondered how London would react to his newly found viciousness. He was also not given to wishing his enemies alive again in order to kill them more slowly, with more trauma—or to wondering if Emile Leopold Locque had somehow escaped him, after all.

But it had definitely been Locque in that car! Bond had looked him in the eyes. Locque had been on Kristatos’ ship at the warehouse, taking inventory. Bond had seen Locque blow up the warehouse and drive away in that car, the same sedan that Bond had kicked over the cliff, sending Locque to his death on the rocks of the Aegean.

“Locque is also dead, by the way,” he said to jump-start the inevitable, “just like Kristatos.”

“We know,” Tanner replied. “And that is why you are going to Brussels, 007.”

Bond blinked—also uncharacteristic of him. “Brussels.”

“Someone has stepped into Locque’s place—very quickly and efficiently, I might add. We want you to roust this new man and take him alive. Alive, this time, if you can.” A bit of a sardonic glint showed in Tanner’s eyes, but otherwise, his manner was no different than before.

An audible sigh escaped from Bond before he could stop it. “But—sir, why can’t Interpol—”

“Bond.” Tanner stood up, taking the pipe from his mouth. “Milos Columbo is dead.”

There was a silent explosion between them, and then Tanner dipped his head and went on, “He was assassinated on his own ship, and not by one of his own men. Of that much we are certain. Our agents were still on board at the time, and even his men do not know the combination to his own cabin—and what reason would any of them have for planting that damned dove pin on his body? Oh yes, a dove pin, Bond. None of Columbo’s men ever sported any pin, only a dove applique on their uniforms. Columbo had a dove ring, and that was it for jewelry—no cloisonné pins, which by the way, can be purchased at a storefront in Brussels, but are not found anywhere in Corfu.” Tanner shook his head. “That red herring was chosen by Locque to throw you off the trail, and it was used this time by this new mystery man as a message specifically for _you_.” He stepped out from behind the desk.

“Melina!” broke in Bond. “And Bibi, and Brink…”

“Melina Havelock is safe. The Greek government has her in protective custody. She agreed to it for the safety of her crew. As for Miss Bibi Dahl and her coach, they have disappeared from Columbo’s ship. Perhaps they are in hiding. Or perhaps…” Tanner moved to look Bond directly in the eyes. “This is apparently not over, 007. It seems to have become…personal against you. I cannot imagine why, although you must also admit that more than any other enemy you have confronted, Locque got under your skin. Perhaps he had a close associate.”

Bond asked tersely, “If it is personal against me, what concern is it of the Secret Service? Why send me to Brussels?”

“Well, I cannot think of who would do this, what with Kristatos dead, Kriegler in custody, the ATAC destroyed, and the Kremlin preoccupied with conducting RYAN, their intelligence operation against the United States.” He arched an eyebrow.

“Preoccupied. Or so it would seem,” Bond mused aloud, feeling again in his pocket for that nut shell.

“Precisely. Moreover, we have found that Aris Kristatos was not Moscow’s only contact in that part of Greece. In fact, it was _Locque_ and not Kristatos who was the KGB’s primary enforcer in that part of the world.” Tanner waved his pipe in irritation. “Locque was a bigger threat to us than we took him for. Clever that, don’t you think? making Kristatos think that Locque worked for _him_ , when in fact Locque was there to maneuver Kristatos to follow Moscow’s true agenda? Had Columbo not killed Kristatos, Locque would have killed him before you could get to the ATAC. Locque’s orders were coming, we now know, directly from General Gogol himself.”

Bond smiled a thin smile. “And now, Locque’s replacement under General Gogol is ‘working’ for someone else! In Brussels.”

“What the Kremlin wants in Brussels is anyone’s guess. We have to know, Bond. I’m afraid that this time I don’t even have a file of information to give you—only the scraps that I have told you just now. For Your Ears Only, I suppose.”

Bond glanced at his useless report on Tanner’s desk and nodded. “I’ll leave this afternoon.”

As Bond made his way to the door, Tanner called after him, “It is a pity we did not get anything out of Locque. In light of what we now know, questioning _him_ would have been…rather useful, wouldn’t you say?”

With his hand on the doorknob, Bond turned back to Tanner in anger. “And it’s a pity you did not see the condition of the body of that poor, sweet girl on the beach after Locque had once again, as you put it, made himself ‘useful.’”

“Hmmph.” Tanner nodded. “I understand, James.” Tanner never called him, “James.” It calmed Bond, somewhat. “But—be careful, 007. Be particularly on your guard this time. This replacement for Locque, whoever he is, enjoys killing as much as the last one, and is as good at it.”


	2. Katherine

There were two parallel ways to proceed: one was to find out who Gogol had hired and what the KGB was up to; the other, and simpler, was to retrace the steps that had taken Locque to Greece.

In Brussels, Bond walked the streets, and stopped in that shop that Tanner identified as having sold the Cloisonné pin. The young, squat clerk behind the counter did not recognize the mug shot of Locque. “But I do remember a _fair-haired_ man,” she said, “tall and thin like that, buying one. He took it from me and stuck it into his lapel, right here, and chatted for a few moments. He was very charming and his voice was deep—I would remember his voice if I heard it again. And he was very handsome! This man is similar—now that I think of it, he had similar lips, full like that. But not this hair.”

“Could that have been this man with a changed appearance?” asked Bond. “Could the hair have been shorter, or smoothed back, and a different color?”

The clerk studied the mug shot again. “His hair was long, smoothed back. The eyes might be similar. But I really cannot say. I could not see his eyes very well.”

“Was he wearing glasses?” Bond asked, for the mug shot did not include Locque’s signature octagonal spectacles.

“Yes, Cazal frames, blue-tinted—aviator glasses.”

Frustrated, Bond returned to his hotel room for the noon hour. More information on Locque had arrived in the meantime, files from Interpol that M had sent him, and a few newspaper clippings as a result of some inquiries Bond had made from the Royal Library of Belgium. Unfortunately, there were no recent photographs, but a young Locque laughed at Bond from a mimeographed newspaper page; at seventeen years of age he had just been awarded a literary prize for poetry. The image was startling; in contrast to the silent and angular henchman on that ski lift in Cortina, this Locque was robust and engaging, with an easy smile, and no glasses. This seventeen-year-old was artistic, apparently talented, and in addition worked for his father, a prominent horse breeder.

Bond stared at this photo and shook his head. The lips and eyes were indeed similar, but that did not preclude the man that Bond knew as Locque from stealing this man’s identity. On the other hand, this young man would now be of the right age to indeed be Locque. There was no way to be sure without real evidence.

He rang the Royal Library this time, and without much hope asked for any other newspaper articles that would contain a mention of the literary prize, and of Locque’s family. As expected, he was told to fill out a formal request, which required him to name the newspapers and give the dates of the articles. When he persisted in asking the reference librarian to research this for him, the man argued with him, and then a female voice interjected itself in the background. The librarian began to argue with her as well, until she insisted upon taking the phone.

“Mr. Bond?” It was the female voice, in English. She had an American accent. “My name is Katherine and I will do your research for you.” Bond thanked her, and she apologized, “I’m afraid it is not standard procedure to do so much work on behalf of a patron, but I am happy to do so. I am a study abroad student here at the library and could use the experience. I don’t mind at all.” Since the library would be open the following day, then closed due to the national holiday, she promised to contact him the next morning, and he left his phone number with her. As he hung up, it occurred to him that she sounded much older than the typical student.

He went to a café for lunch, and read the reports from Interpol. Locque’s psychiatrist at Namur Prison had not been a native-born Belgian, but Julio Armando Sanchez, a name that Bond vaguely recognized as also a self-help writer, from South America. There was a British woman, Margaret Evans, who was briefly listed as his fiancé. Emile Locque had been badly beaten by some hooligans at age twenty and spent some months in hospital; this and the engagement were apparently long before he had any criminal record. Bond tried to imagine a young, privileged Locque as a poet, being groomed by his father to take over the family business, then later choosing a life as a hit man, and shook his head—nothing was adding up.

Bond returned to his hotel room, showered, threw on his robe, and rang room service for a cognac. As he was settling down to with his drink, the phone rang again. “Mr. Bond?” It was the student again, and she sounded nervous. “I’m sorry to disturb you, but I did not want to wait until tomorrow…”

“It’s all right. Have you found something?”

“As a matter of fact, just a few moments ago, I found an E. Locque among the call slips while I was tidying up. He apparently came in some time around your call and filled out his request while I was shelving. The reference librarian helped him, so I never saw him. I came across his name just now.”

Bond stood up to pace, as was his habit when he spoke on the phone. “Can you tell me what his request was?”

She hesitated. “Really, it’s—I should not. It’s not done, to inform a patron about another patron’s requests or record. I can’t even give the names of books that anyone has checked out—”

“Please,” he urged. “It’s vitally important.”

She sighed, waited a moment, then said, “Mr. Bond, it’s the strangest thing. He asked for the same thing, exactly the same thing, that _you_ asked: copies of articles regarding the literary prize that he won when he was seventeen, and articles about his father’s racing horses. So really, that made my search much easier, as _he_ listed all the relevant journal names and dates, and all I had to do was look in the reference librarian’s folder for the information. I can mimeograph the articles right from the folder for you as well.”

“Did this E. Locque leave any contact information?” Bond pressed.

“Fortunately not, for there is no way that I am allowed to provide that to you. He stated that he would come by in person tomorrow to pick them up before we close for the holiday.”

_Would he, indeed!_ Bond smiled tightly. Gogol’s new man was trailing him—good. “Thank you, Katherine. Thank you very much. I will be in the library myself the first thing in the morning.”


	3. Contempt

General Gogol’s assassin watched the women in the Royal Windsor Hotel fitness center, his lip curling in contempt. Simpering, vapid females with agendas, gliding and posing, offering their augmented breasts and their waxed crotches for public display as they pretended to exercise, interchangeable females all tall, all skinny and alike, and predictable. Men were idiots to be aroused by such vermin, and these women approached him too with their desperately sexy moves, the same looks, the same stupid talk, as if he could be as gullible as any other man. Had these bitches any sense, they would fear him.

He scanned the room, looking for that opportunity, that odd girl, that special type who was worth it all. She could not be shallow, like these opportunists—she had to feel, and feel deeply—and what he enjoyed most in a woman was one who looked at him and felt afraid.

But it was not merely that. Bibi Dahl had been afraid of him, afraid like a cow, numb and instinctively, a wan kid. He needed a mature victim, a woman’s fear, but more important was something even beyond it. “I would have never thought,” Kristatos teased him once, “that you wanted such depth in a woman!” Kristatos had been bemused to learn of the assassin’s behavior at Gonzalez’s villa, to hear that he had merely retrieved the blood money intended for Gonzalez and left without sampling Gonzalez’s entourage. All business, the Belgian had ignored the bathing beauties that Gonzalez always surrounded himself with, eye-candy who would have, even after the murder of their host, been more than willing to offer their services to the octagonal bespectacled visitor and his associate. But after the murder of Gonzalez by Melina Havelock, both men had promptly left the villa.

“The only one of those cunts I could possibly be interested in was the one who was reportedly a man,”* he had replied to Kristatos who, along with his men, had burst into raucous laughter. They all knew that the Belgian was not gay; Kriegler, who was bi-sexual, had already made the mistake of approaching the assassin, and news of the fallout had quickly gotten around the Kristatos’ ship. Hell, it had reportedly even gotten around Columbo’s fleet, with Columbo and his men chuckling despite themselves at the image of the tall bespectacled assassin calling beefy Kriegler an ugly woman while Kriegler stumbled out of the cabin with his penis and balls duct-taped back toward his anus.

Kristatos had mistaken that statement as simply an insult directed toward Gonzalez’s women, a criticism of their beauty. Kristatos would have never understood. A transsexual, at least, would have had some imagination—and in some ways, they were all more feminine for having chosen to live as a female, to be distinctive and to take a risk, than the women in this resort who worked hard to attain their generic appearance and resemble each other. But he preferred biological women exclusively—unlike Kriegler, and unlike Kristatos, who had panted after stupid little Bibi.

Irritably, the Belgian rose. If he was to find the woman he was looking for, he had to sit at a café with normal citizens, not waste his time in a resort alongside washed-up models and ballerina drop-outs addicted to painkillers and heroin and _Kir_.

Outside the hotel, he told his driver that he would walk, and to keep the car close by.

Walking in the street near Warandepark, he smiled at random women to see their reactions. Here again, most were unattractive to him—harried mothers, elderly maids, _au pairs_ , students. They smiled back blankly, answered his greeting, and continued their errands; if he was particularly unfortunate, the lonely ones trailed him for a few steps or a few blocks, pathetically hopeful, ultimately resigned. What was it with young _au pairs_ wearing fishnet stockings and tennis shoes with miniskirts? He shook his head. At length he found a café table and ordered a coffee.

What did turn him on had surprised Kristatos: the good woman, the honest woman, of modest means and natural beauty, and beyond even that an intellectual woman, introspective, of great integrity and imagination. The assassin demanded this, and he was not interested in the interchangeably ambitious whores that Kristatos’ men used up. Kristatos simply could not understand it, and neither could thick-headed Kriegler or any of their associates, for their reticent colleague seemed to be such a cold fish that it appeared impossible for the Belgian to appreciate any woman at all, let alone the strong, independent type that was anathema to them.

The Belgian could only smile to himself. What he wanted was a woman who feared him, who resisted him, who lived a respectable life as far removed from his underworld as possible and who wanted nothing to do with it, but also who still could not stop herself from enjoying it when he touched her.

What the assassin enjoyed most was finding an intelligent woman and reducing her to worse than a slave—a masochist, someone who despised him and still could not stop herself from surrendering to what he did to her. He loved feeling a woman’s body open involuntarily to him despite her hands pushing him away. Such women were actually rare, though scenarios like his were currently all the rage in women’s romance novels. It was a common enough female fantasy, but few acted it out. And for all his brutality he was still a man, and he could turn on the charm when he wanted and tease out pleasure from a woman’s body. The few women of Kristatos’ retinue that he had taken to bed reported afterward that the assassin was a surprisingly considerate lover. (With acid humor, the Belgian had made sure that these women repeated the details in little Bibi’s presence, and the girl sucked up this information like a sponge. Kristatos had been furious when he found out.) 

The Belgian assassin wanted to find that singularly conflicted woman and make her aware of her own shameful thoughts and desires, to find the dirty secrets in her that even she did not know, and to force her to acknowledge them. He _needed_ this, as some men needed a woman to have big tits or blonde hair, or to suck his cock. While he enjoyed giving her fear, watching her frightened eyes slowly unfocus and roll with pleasure was what he lived for. No woman that he had abducted endured a captivity without any tenderness. He loved to take his prisoner to the brink of ecstasy, only to pull back and smile as the emotions rioted in her, she unwillingly wanting him, she agitated that he had finally stopped as she had earlier begged him to do. He wanted to see that look on her face when she became aroused, and was ashamed that she was aroused. Those times when he had enjoyed such power at causing a woman to betray everything she believed in were the only real moments of pleasure he had felt in his life—aside from killing.

For him to accomplish this, the woman he was looking for had to have a brain in her skull, unlike that Bibi Dahl. She had to have ethics, an education, and a certain amount of creativity. Brink was more his type, although too old—one had to wonder if there could be a volcano beneath all that ice—but Jacoba Brink had escaped, dragging her wan little charge off Columbo’s ship. Ignorant Kristatos had only wanted pussy, not understanding his tastes at all. Kristatos and Kriegler and their men could not appreciate the adventure of violating a woman’s mind.

And Brink was probably a lesbian, anyway. The Belgian chuckled a little at the further education that Bibi might be receiving at this moment.

The assassin’s eyes continued to scan the sidewalk for the right victim. The hunt was enjoyable in itself if it did not last too long. Since watching—with great pleasure—James Bond fly off a ski jump in downhill skies only to escape death, he had learned not to draw out his pleasure for too long, for then his quarry might escape.

Bond.

He grimaced.

That Melina Havelock, if he could get to her, would make a good candidate—perfect, actually. She was naturally beautiful, accomplished, unspoiled, and to sweeten the deal Kristatos had killed her parents. Melina would remember seeing the assassin at Gonzalez’s villa in Madrid, paying off Gonzalez for their murders, and would have more than enough reason to hate him as he put his hands on her. Even if he was not able to arouse any desire in her, taking her would be a rare revenge, both a pleasure and a way to strike at Bond, but there was no way that he could get around the Greek government. He had no choice but to look for someone else.

It became the late afternoon and the hour of _le goûter_ arrived, and people were now crowding the cafés. He ordered another coffee and sat back in boredom, stirring without drinking, watching the more fashionable women arrive from work or from their shopping. However, most of them were dull, BCBG and the Eurotrash who tried to imitate them, blundering American tourists, and obnoxious old women. He saw his driver round a far corner and come toward him slowly, also scanning the women for prospects. The driver pulled up to the curb and made faces behind the backs of various candidates, while the assassin leaned on his elbow and watched with just a slight, amused downturning of his lips.

At length he lifted his cup, then set it down quickly and gawked in amazement at the young woman who was walking up the sidewalk. She had already earned a great deal of attention, wearing those short-shorts; men were hanging out of car windows and trailing in her wake, cat-calling her and whistling, while the women tut-tutted and glared at her. She ignored it all and, with a small smile of contempt, strode forward defiantly. Such an outfit was simply not worn on the street in Europe, which still harbored many conservative notions about women. However, she was not acting as if she did not know better, or was so callow as to slop about as many did, but was blatantly flouting convention. Her outfit was provocative, but still tasteful and expensive-looking, and while she was short, she was petite and damned striking with those long, brunette waves and hazel eyes. He watched her approach and went into charm mode, allowing a smile to crack his façade: she passed his table while giving his admiring look a dismissive shrug. Yes, she was deliberately provoking attention— _jouer à la fille inacessible_.

Her progress was halted by a short old lady in a checkered kerchief who stepped into the young woman’s path, and who with balled fists lambasted the American for the boldness of her dress. The young woman regarded this scrunched face calmly, and then, just as calmly, looked down at the shorts at which the old woman was gesticulating, and pulled them down her thighs. They fell to her ankles and she stepped out of them, clad now only in pink cotton bikini underwear. The Belgian felt his own chin drop, along with the mouths of the rest of her audience, men and women in their chairs and on the sidewalk opening their mouths like marionettes in unison.

It certainly silenced the old woman, who stepped back in shock, and the assassin had to set down his cup again without drinking. People stared at the young woman in astonishment, but a few men were laughing in admiration, and he was one of them. Then, when the old woman opened her mouth for another bray, the American lifted her t-shirt over her head. Wearing only a bra and panties, and twirling her shorts and shirt in her hand, she continued her walk. Then she walked faster. Then, as the crowd swelled behind her, she began to run.

The Belgian stood up and motioned to his driver, who had been creeping along the sidewalk toward his seat at the café. His driver lurched the car forward and sped after her. The assassin threw down a few coins and started to walk. He smiled easily now, ignoring the women around him, and did not hurry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *In the documentary "Inside For Your Eyes Only," it is revealed that one of the bathing beauties was indeed a transsexual, and was considered to be the most beautiful of the lot. I think that's an awesome story so I threw that in here.


	4. Exquisite Corpse

When Bond arrived at the library the following morning, he was handed the envelope by the elderly reference librarian, likely the same man who had argued with him on the phone the previous day. The envelope was labeled, “E. Logue.”

When he turned to the door, Bond saw a brunette peeking at him from around a bookshelf. She motioned impishly for him to approach her. Bond angled around the shelf and gazed quizzically at the petite young woman who was smiling mysteriously at him. “Saxon or Celt?” she demanded.

He raised his eyebrows. “I beg your pardon?”

She smiled then. “Are you Mr. Bond or are you Mr. Locque?”

Humorously he presented the envelope. “Despite appearances, my name is Bond. James Bond.”

“I guessed as much—your voice. Then Benoit gave you the wrong envelope. Well, I have yours with me. I am Katherine March.* Shall we move over to the table? I have a surprise for you.”

“Have you not paid your overdue fines?” Bond asked as they walked, noting her secretive manner.

“I’m avoiding Benoit today. For one thing, he and I had a tremendous argument about what I am about to show you, and he forbade me to mention it to you. Plus, he and I locked horns about me doing research for you in the first place, which of course turned out to be unnecessary, anyway. Then I did a not-so-good thing yesterday, mostly on impulse, and caused quite a scene in the street. I don’t want anyone here to recognize me, and mention it to Benoit. I had to run for it before someone called the police. Benoit is a bit of a tyrant, and a prude.”

“I agree with you there, Miss March!” Bond glanced back at the elderly gentleman behind the desk.

“Some creep sent his driver after me in a Mercedes to ‘give me a lift.’ I had to escape both him and the police.” Katherine blushed a little, smiling. “Well—he was not exactly a creep. He was quite elegant, but I’ve been terrified that he would show up here today and turn out to be _you_ , or our mysterious Mr. Locque.”

“What could a librarian do to attract such attention,” asked Bond, “and involve the police?”

“Oh, never mind—I really don’t want to say. The weather was hot yesterday and this position requires me to be swathed in tweed. I rebelled for a few moments. It was a childish thing to do. Although I do think that Mr. Mercedes was on the verge of proposing marriage, which is the closest I have ever come to fulfilling my mother’s dream of having a church wedding.”

Bond smiled back at her. She looked a bit of a tomboy, rather like Melina, although she was smaller and had an hourglass figure in contrast to Melina’s stately height. Katherine March smiled easily but seemed rather shy, best at talking when she had a subject to discuss. He decided to guide her back to it. “What is this ‘surprise’ that you said you had for me?”

“Mr. Bond!” she exclaimed. “Our poet Emile Locque is a _fraud_!” She spread the papers that she carried onto the table. “I thought that I had remembered his name from somewhere—and as a matter of fact, one of my professors mentioned him in class last year. He taught this Emile Locque long ago and still had the poems that Locque gave him before he left Belgium at age twenty—Locque was his star pupil, and my professor gave me some mimeographs of his work. Here they are. And here’s your winning poem, Mr. Bond.” She angled the paper on the table for him to read it. Bond glanced through it, then looked up at her and shrugged, not understanding.

“Nice, isn’t it?” she asked in an acid tone. “Well, it’s a complete rip-off of other poems. He took lines from dada and surrealist poetry, inverted them, and put them together. I don’t know if he was making fun of Dadaist randomness or surrealist _exquisite corpse_ , or both—or perhaps he was mocking the stuffiness of literary culture, which makes me like him a bit more—but I cannot believe that this was not discovered before. No, actually, I can—few people really study dada or surrealism, even today, even in Europe. Most professors are still stuck in the symbolist era. Benoit is, and he and I disagreed about that, too—I had a time convincing him to purchase any books of poetry after 1920. And these are mostly taken from minor poems, anyway, and at any rate the prize was more publicized than the poem. But Emile Locque forged the entire thing.”

Bond admitted, “I always thought of dada and surrealism as aesthetic, rather than literary, movements.”

“Most people do, particularly because of Salvador Dali, but they were neither. Both movements were reactions against post-World War I European bourgeois values, and against the very concepts of artistry and literature, which they found useless. The surrealists in particular wanted to find new values, to reinvent life, and to be conduits to the Marvelous, which they sought in the unconscious and the nonrational.” She pushed the other papers forward. “Now, what really gets me is, the rest of his work _is_ original, and it is _good_. It is seriously good, and he truly was talented. So why he offered up this instead of any of his real poems is beyond me. But this is the poem that won, so there you are.”

“Yes, odd,” Bond replied thoughtfully. She handed over the articles and the poems, and Bond accepted them politely. There were no photographs among them, so this information was of little interest to Bond. “I did not wish to say anything to alarm you last night,” he told the young woman, “but you might have saved yourself the trouble of mimeographing these articles again. Our Mr. Locque will not be here to retrieve these. He has since moved on.”

She studied him as he slipped the papers into his suit jacket. She reminded him a little of Miss Moneypenny too in her quiet observation of every detail; he could tell she was no longer wondering why he had no briefcase. “Has he—is this Emile Locque some kind of criminal?” she asked.

“Well, as Thomas Mann** would say, aren’t most poets?” But Bond’s jocularity did not amuse her. He picked up the other set of mimeographs and held them out to her. “Keep them for yourself. And—don’t accept any rides from elegant men.” He succeeded in making her smile again, briefly.

“He requested these as a message to _you_ , didn’t he?” she persisted. “Who is he, Mr. Bond? And who are you?”

Miss Moneypenny indeed! He gave her a parting smile and left the library.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * Katherine March ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarlet_Street#Plot ) Big Fritz Lang fan here.  
> **Ian Fleming was a big fan of Thomas Mann's "Death in Venice."


	5. A God, or Another Satan

_Enough of Locque_ , Bond groused to himself. This line of investigation had reached, appropriately, a dead end. He had to focus on Gogol, on Gogol’s new hire.

Gogol. “Always think of what is useful and not what is beautiful. Beauty will come of its own accord,” came a sudden quote to Bond. Gogol was the name of a writer, too—Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol, the 19th century dramatist and short story writer. All of these poets’ names… Bond passed his finger over his lips, wondering if there was a connection. Surely not—although Russians were more given than westerners to literary allusions, naming their secret missions after characters from Dostoyevsky and the like. However, most Russians were proud of their heritage, criminals and communists included. There was no more to it than that.

He began to walk back to his hotel room, in the older part of Brussels—by the Place Sainte-Catherine, he suddenly noted with amusement. For no real reason he touched the envelope in his jacket, thinking of the report on Miss March sent to him by Interpol. She would be finding his special message to her right about now.

As he walked the sidewalks, he became aware of a dark Mercedes creeping along behind him. The last thing that anyone wanted to do when being followed was to walk more quickly, but Bond did just that in order to lure the driver. The car accelerated to keep up with him. When the vehicle was traveling at a good clip, Bond abruptly turned and walked in the direction he had come, and got a good look at the driver. He was young, pale with dark aviator glasses and a shock of brown hair. He _could_ have been one of Locque’s drivers in Cortina. Bond gave the thug a polite nod of greeting and reaped a blank stare in return.

Bond crossed the street behind the vehicle, casually drumming his fingers along the trunk before the driver could react, and noted the license number. The driver glared at him; he would have backed into Bond, except that the agent had made sure that a policeman was also walking up the sidewalk toward them. Bond smiled pleasantly at the driver and stepped onto the opposite sidewalk; then he cast an alert look around.

He kept on walking, and came to an open air market. Bond weaved among the carts of produce and found a concealed spot, where he watched the driver exit the car and approach a black-clad man on a motorcycle. That was familiar, too. Bond managed a grim smile. Bad guys dressed in black was a tiresome cliché, whether on this street or in the snows of Cortina. At least there were no spikes in those tires this time.

Bond weaved his way through the market and emerged at the Warandepark. A rather ugly and industrial-looking vert ramp had been temporarily erected at the corner of the green, and it was active with nineteen or twenty skateboarders. Seeing a dark Mercedes flanked by a motorcycle emerge from the traffic, Bond hurriedly crossed the Rue Royale to the park.

The vert ramp had a circular course on and off of it, and the skaters occasionally left the ramp to take a turn on level ground at high speed. Bond stepped in the circle and stood watching the two vehicles as skaters rushed around him. The Mercedes pulled up to the curb, and this time Bond could see that there was a man in the back seat. He strained for a closer look.

One of the skateboarders left the circular path and slammed his body into Bond’s. Bond stumbled forward and had to put down a hand. The impact of the second skater sent him to the ground. Recovering, Bond rolled out of the way of the third, and managed with a shove to send his fourth assailant into his first. He looked up to see what seemed to be ten skateboarders exiting the ramp to converge on him.

Seeing the fourth skater’s empty board, Bond placed his foot on it and pushed off. He left the smooth pavement for the gravely walkway but managed to keep the skateboard moving. When he looked back, about fifteen men were in pursuit, most on their skateboards, a few running instead.

Bond quickly turned left, went through the iron gates to the park, and jumped the two steps to the sidewalk that ran parallel to the inner walkway. The seams from the stones in the walkway both slowed him and made his board difficult to control, but he could gain speed now. Behind him, his pursuers jumped those steps too and continued after him. For all the world, they looked like twenty-something youths, not seasoned hit men, in their jeans and casual shirts, but being so young, they were gaining on him. In addition, the Mercedes had caught up to him and was now keeping pace with him in the Rue Royale. To his right was the iron fence. He was trapped.

There was nowhere to go but forward—or backward. Ducking low, Bond folded his arms around his head and leaped, placing a foot on either side of the skateboard, which now went zipping in front of him. He rolled toward the street, found his footing, and stood. Unfortunately, the grille of the Mercedes was there to meet him.

Bond leaped. He managed to land on the hood as the driver accelerated, but there was nothing for him to hold on to, and while the driver was forced to continue forward by the traffic behind him, as soon as they reached the next intersection he would brake, hard. The driver was smiling evilly at Bond through the windshield. Quickly, Bond scrambled up to the roof and over, holding on as best he could to the trim. The driver gave the brake several abrupt pumps in an attempt to throw him off.

They were nearing the intersection, and instead of braking, the driver made a right, trying again to toss Bond into the street. However, a truck in front of him forced him to slow, and Bond managed to hang on. Amazingly, Bond’s skateboard was still rolling on the pavement and was bumping towards him now, like a loyal dog. Bond scrambled off of the car and placed his foot on it.

He pushed off again to cross the intersection, and managed another ironic salute to the driver, who was now boxed between that truck and a small car behind. The Mercedes was now between him and the gang of skateboarders still pursuing him, and Bond picked his way between honking cars to cross the Rue de la Loi as fast as he dared to go. Loafers were not ideal skating shoes, but he kept his balance and looked back to see the driver emerge from the Mercedes to point a gun at him.

Again he ducked, riding desperately on the skateboard while cars swerved around him and the driver ran after. Several shots clipped the street around him, which thankfully was not cobblestoned. Then there was a tremendous explosion and a squealing of tires, and a sickening thud, the sound of which Bond definitely recognized. The driver had accidentally shot out the tire of a bus, which went careening onto its side, and into him. He and his aviator glasses were now crushed beneath the bus.

Although he fervently hoped that no civilians had been injured, it was not his job to go back and check. His mouth set in a grim line, he pushed off again in the direction of the library.

# 

Katherine frowned at the slips of paper shoved amongst the articles. They could only have come from Mr. Bond. They were a light brown, like parchment, or grocery paper to wrap meat. There was a note with them:

> Your family has refused to press charges, Miss March, so you are only listed as a missing person by the international police. However, I suggest that you pay back the money, so that the IRS does not pursue an investigation when it audits your father. Whenever you have need of contacting me, write clearly in block letters on one of the pieces of paper and place it unfolded into one of the envelopes that I have included. You do not need a mailbox, or a postman; simply lay it in a public area, even on a rooftop, and your message will get to me. I am deeply concerned about you.  
> Your friend,  
> James Bond

As she gathered up the papers and tamped them irritably into some semblance of order, who but the real Esau came zipping down the sidewalk outside the window on, of all things, a skateboard! Katherine placed Bond’s note and his proffered stationery back in the folder. This she shoved into her jacket as well, having no bag or purse after having to hawk nearly everything that she owned. Before Bond could enter the library carrying that thing, she went out meet him.

“You’re a spook!” she grumbled in disbelief, and received an amused glint.

“Please,” replied Bond, casting a look around. “After the day I’ve had, don’t I even merit a ‘cowabunga’?”

“The IRS—ha! If they actually started auditing scam artists like my father, the windfall would erase the national debt.”

“Look, Miss March, calm down,” Bond said. “Interpol would have sent its report on you to any agent coming to this city. I just happened to be the one to receive it. I assure you, I am not here in Brussels solely on your account.”

“I don’t know you from _Homo erectus_ ,” she huffed, “but anyone who uses ‘magic stationery’ read by a satellite is obviously working in intelligence.”

Bond raised an eyebrow. “I did not expect you to know about it. At any rate, keep it.”

“So, they’ve caught up with me, at last. Well, I’ll tell you something, Mr. Bond—for all of my so-called crimes, I can look forward to another evening of scraping the last of my butter onto a stale baguette, and adding a little cheese and a swallow of sour wine, before I wrangle my clothing beneath the running water in my kitchen sink. And I am lucky to have that sink.”

“I am not here to judge you, Katherine.”

Of course he was not—he was too damn pure. She was surrounded by prudes! Benoit; the women who smirked at her in cafés because she drank a single espresso or a wine alone, and only once in a while, while writing or reading a book instead of enjoying the company of some cheating husband; the old hags who tut-tutted at her for wearing the one nice outfit that she owned, bought for her by her free-spirited aunt, who had also escaped her family’s mausoleum-like church and its cult (itself quite disapproving of women wearing shorts); Mr. Elegant with his ugly, boxy Mercedes and that driver of his who looked like a refugee from a one-hit wonder New Wave band—what was it with the aviator glasses these days? That driver had been wearing tinted ones, to boot. Give him a cup of pencils and a hand-lettered sign, and he could make a killing outside of the _A Flock of Seagulls_ concert. And now, Mr. Bond was her _friend_. Katherine sighed.

“Mr. Bond, I do not have that money to pay it back—and as far as I’m concerned—”

“Call me James,” he interjected gently.

“Frankly, _James_ , that money was mine to begin with. My father owed me that money. I worked in his ministry all of my life—he had no regard for child labor laws—in that day care and in that kitchen. I raised my own siblings. I kept house and cooked for my family, because my mother was too busy getting herself made up for another interview with my father. I did not squander that money—I went to college on it, and came to Europe on it. In case you have not noticed, I’m nearly thirty and in my final semester of school. My father has _millions_ , James, whereas I never received an allowance! Moreover, he does not believe that women should go to college or have careers. And now, I am nearly penniless.”

Bond nodded. “I see.”

His face looked truly sympathetic, so Katherine paused. Perhaps she should have gone with Mr. Elegant yesterday, after all. He would probably have dumped her with a slap to her face after an energetic holiday if she was lucky, or try to force her into prostitution if she was unlucky, but at least it would not have been boring. Then Bond would not have caught up with her, either. “Look, I am sorry for having made you angry,” Bond continued. “You guessed correctly about my profession, and I am on a case—but when I next phone London, which will be tonight, I will enlist a friend to help you. He also happens to be my employer. I am afraid that your father _will_ be audited, Katherine. You need a lawyer, a good one; he would be able to enlist one for you.”

She blushed a little, and nodded. “Has he—was my father caught with the radio transmitter? The one my mother used to transmit information about audience members to him when he was performing his ‘healings’?”

“Your father has been thoroughly unmasked, I’m afraid—which means that you may have to testify against him. He could face major racketeering charges.”

“Well,” she said softly, “maybe there really is a God. Or at least, another Satan.”

Bond smiled fondly at her. “I won’t keep you any further. But use the stationery, and I’ll send aid to your from wherever I am. Unless…you would like to have dinner with me tonight?” Seeing her doubtful look, he added, “Just as a nice change from stale baguettes?”

She smiled back at him—she could not help it. “All right. When the library closes, I’ll ring your room. You’re still there?”

“Yes.” He sent the skateboard off with his foot. “And never fear—we’ll take the Lotus. No skateboards, no chauffeurs, and no Mercedes.” She smiled again—her face transformed when she did. She really was quite attractive, and yes, much older than he first surmised. “Later, then,” he concluded, and walked off in his scuffed loafers.

Katherine chuckled at the contradictions in this man, and went back inside. Benoit was occupied with a patron at one of the reading desks, so she assumed her place behind the reference desk with a touch of determination. At her return, a man unfolded himself from one of the chairs to approach, as if he had been waiting.

She looked up. “May I help you?”

The man smiled a little. He had full lips that stretched sensuously. “I am looking for the most recent biography of Arthur Rimbaud.”

Katherine nodded. “Are you familiar with the biography of him by Enid Starkie? That is the most recent one published. There have not been any written for some time, unfortunately.”

“I don’t believe that I have read it. That would do.” His deep, hard voice was jolting, saying these words so politely. It made her really notice him. He was so tall, so solemn with those octagonal glasses, and so thin, yet broad-shouldered and striking. He reminded her of Mr. Elegant, but that man had been blond, and without glasses. His manner too was different, more reserved.

She smiled, suddenly self-conscious. “It was written some years ago, but I highly recommend it, and we do have it in the collection. Do you wish me to tell you where it is, or shall I retrieve it for you?”

He gallantly gestured for her to precede him. “Thank you,” replied Locque. “I shall accompany you to its location.”


	6. Bibi

Bond paced his hotel room, then checked his watch. It was growing late, and he had heard nothing in the last half hour but police sirens, which he attributed to the beginning of the long weekend. At length, there was a knock on the door. He strode quickly to it and pressed his eye to the peephole.

He paused, and considered not opening the door. However, the rapping was repeated, more insistently this time. Bond briefly glanced heavenward and, bracing himself for the assault, pulled the door open. “James!” squealed Bibi Dahl as she flung herself into the room, all long blonde locks and blue eyes and white teeth. Bond smiled tolerantly as she mauled him with bubble gum lip gloss. “I’ve found you at last!” She gripped him as if she were drowning.

“I had no idea that you were looking for me,” he replied patiently.

“But you must have!” She let go of him to gawk at his face. “You _must_ know about Columbo.”

He took her arm and escorted her to a chair. He sat across from her. “I do know. That is why I am here. Now, Bibi, I want you to tell me where Jacoba Brink is.”

“Brink?” Bibi sat with an unladylike _plop_. “But you told her to bring me here!”

Bond leaned forward. “Let me guess. A telegram?”

“You don’t remember?”

“I did not send it, Bibi.” Bond put his hand over the figure skater’s small, cold one. “And now, I think you had better summon Brink and leave the country, as soon as you can.” He noted her look of disappointment. “Go back to Greece and register with the authorities; they can protect you. Or go to Great Britain and wait for me there. I’ll write down an address where you can stay.” He reached for a pen and a hotel pad, and saw that she had brightened again. He tore off the paper and gave it to her. “I’ll come there as quickly as I can, once I have finished here.”

“Oh, James,” she said as she took it, “I’ve been so worried about you. Just this morning I saw that man again, the one that worked for Uncle Ar—for Ari. The scary one.”

“Aris Kristatos?” Bond checked his watch again. Katherine was overdue; the library would have closed fifteen minutes ago. In another five minutes he would ring the concierge in the hostel where he knew she was staying. “He employed many men. Which one?”

Bibi made circles with her fingers around her eyes. “You know. The creepy one, with the glasses. Who never says anything.”

“ _Where did you see him_?”

Bond rushed to the closet and grabbed his coat. Bibi stood up, and he took her elbow. “Where?”

She shuddered. “He was coming out of a man’s salon, near Warandepark. I don’t get it, for he looked the same as he always did—ugly!”

“Did he see you?”

“No. I hid and watched him go up the street. Then I came here to tell you, but you were gone.”

Bond hid his irritation; of course she had been followed. Helpful little Bibi had led Gogol’s new hire right to him! “Now, look,” he said pointedly, “you’re going straight to the airport and you’re getting on a plane, to anywhere, with or without Brink. Understand?” He marched her out of his hotel room and down the stairs.

It was a Friday night and the beginning of the holiday; Bond waved at taxis in vain. A light rain had begun to fall, so he guided Bibi toward the edge of the crowd and toward a covered doorway. “Stay here out of the rain. I have an inquiry to make. I won’t be but two minutes.” Shaking the droplets from his collar, he approached the concierge desk. “Would you please ring the room of Miss March?”

“She’s not here, sir,” replied the stout old woman. “She has not returned from work, and there was some incident at the library that closed it a half hour early. I am very worried.”

“Incident?” Bond asked, but the lady could only shake her head. Bond quickly returned to Bibi. She looked up expectantly as he thought for a moment. “Bibi. How brave are you?” he asked finally. “Would you be able to do me a great favor?”

“Sure!” she trilled. “Anything, James!”

“Good. Well, I am going to boost you into that window,” and he pointed to the second floor. “Hopefully, it’s unlocked. And you’re going to crawl in, and—without turning on any lights, you understand—sit there until someone comes, or until I return. You’ll be safe there for the time being. I need to see about something else. I won’t be long.”

“It’s that creep, isn’t it?” Bibi asked. “He’s after you!”

“He is. Now Bibi, remember—once in the room, you don’t turn on any lights. Don’t do anything, just sit there. And do not answer the door; only let the concierge open it, or the woman who lives there. If either of them enter, immediately call my hotel and leave a message for me, but don’t answer the telephone yourself if it rings. I’ll come back here as soon as I can.” He squatted, and laced his fingers. She clutched the lower window frame, and stepped into his hands. “Careful!” he said, low, as she placed her other foot at the top of the window frame, then grabbed the sill on the second story. As she pulled herself up, he stood, then pushed with both hands over her head.

She pulled at the windows, and they opened outward. He acknowledged her beam of triumph with a nod, and she placed a knee on the sill, then lifted her other foot out of his hands. “Good girl!” he said, when she waved at him from the window. “Remember, now—no lights, no opening the door, no phone-calling, and not a sound.”

Bibi blew him a kiss and disappeared inside.

Bond turned and made his way as quickly as he could for the library.


	7. Prisoner

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning: abduction and rape

Katherine lay, groggy and uncomprehending, on her side. Her mouth was dry, and she had a hard time swallowing. When she opened her eyes, it was dark, and she could not see anything. She could not move. Her left arm tingled, and she shifted painfully; both of her arms were mashed behind her. Her jaw ached, but she could not close her mouth, for a piece of cloth cleaved her lips. She felt the panic rise up, and fought it; she must not cry, or then she might not be able to breathe. When she moaned, it frightened her; it did not sound anything like her.

Slowly, as she looked around, the outline of windows in a darkened room became visible.

A hand gripped her hair. “No sound,” instructed a man’s voice, the man from the library, she was sure. After a second, he released her, and the cloth was pulled from her lips. Katherine could not help coughing, so she turned her face toward the pillow to stifle it, afraid that he would gag her again.

He switched on a light, and she squinted against it. Her wrists were untied, and she rolled on her back to massage her left arm. Her legs were likewise freed. The bed seemed to be turning, very slowly, in a circle. Her head bobbed sleepily. “There, there,” the deep voice said, with a trace of humor. “The scary part is over. Sit up, now.”

She did. His hands unbuttoned her jacket and pulled it down her arms. It fell to the floor. She focused her eyes on her lap, but with her peripheral vision was aware of his face very close to hers, his glasses winking at her in the light, his light brown hair long over his ears. He handed her a glass of water, and she drank it. He smiled at little when she swallowed wrong and coughed, not expecting it to be Perrier. He reached out a hand to smooth back a lock of her hair, anticipating her flinch, but she did not. She did not look at him, but down at her lap. Deliberately he lifted his hand and ran it through her hair. She stared straight ahead, clutching the empty glass.

“Do you want to know why you are here?” the voice prompted her.

She emphatically shook her head. It make him chuckle. He took the glass and set it aside, then slid that hand around her waist and leaned his mouth close to her ear to see how she would react.

He could feel her fast breathing, and she stiffened a bit, but otherwise she remained passive. To test her further he reached his free hand to cup a breast, and while she swallowed, she remained motionless, and focused her wide eyes far off in the distance, beyond the walls. It troubled him. She had a lot of control over her fear; instead of mindlessly resisting him like most women did, this one could withdraw from him in her mind, become catatonic, where he could not easily get to her. He had seen it happen before with a few highly sensitive types. No, she had strong defenses. He would have to proceed carefully.

He took his hands from her and sat back, regarding her thoughtfully. Her eyes darted back and forth from her lap to his hand on his knee, but it was a full minute before she finally steeled a glance up at his face. Her hands clutched each other in front of her and she was still breathing hard, and blinking rapidly. He tilted his head and drew his brows together, and watched her shudder. Then with a slight touch on her hand, which made her jump, he left the bed and went out the door.

#

The library was dark when he reached it, but Bond saw Benoit standing outside beneath an umbrella, talking to two police officers. He went up to the uniformed men and drew them aside to display his credentials, something that he did only in an emergency. “You are Monsieur Locque,” the elderly librarian observed.

“No, I am James Bond, from London,” he corrected the old man, allowing him to assume that he represented Scotland Yard. “What happened to Miss March?”

Benoit waved a hand. “She skipped out hours ago. The holiday. I do not appreciate her leaving early. I will have a talk with her on Tuesday.” He snorted.

“Someone lit a fire in the library,” said one of the officers. “We are almost certain that it was two young men. Pranks before the long weekend. It will be a long weekend for us, as well.”

“But Miss March is missing,” Bond insisted. “She was supposed to meet me after her shift, and she has not contacted me.”

Benoit shook his head. “Ah, she is a young woman, Mr. Logue! Plenty of handsome jackanapes to escort a pretty girl in Brussels. Do not take it personally.” He expelled a wheezing laugh.

Bond stepped irritably in the path of the officer, halting him in the process of wandering away while writing in his notebook. “I tell you that Miss Katherine March is a missing person.”

The officer shook his head. “I am afraid not, Mr. Bond, until 48 hours pass. That is the law in Belgium. She was supposed to meet you after work here? Well, had the library closed at its normal time, a half-hour ago, she would still be walking home; and perhaps, with the early closing, she decided to visit a café. I see no reason for concern.”

“I do,” Bond asserted. “A man followed her yesterday in the street, and tried to entice her into a car. He unnerved her. A man also showed up at the library and made a reference request that was disturbing. There could be a connection.”

“Indeed there was—a skateboard connected these two men. You are describing yourself!” offered a cynical Benoit.

The officer bobbed his head distractedly. “Give me the description of Miss March.”

Before Bond could get a word in, Benoit blared, “American. Brunette, long and wavy hair, early thirties, oval face, hazel eyes, slim figure, translucent skin, long legs.” He grinned foolishly. Both officers glanced sidelong at him.

“She did not leave the library with _you_ , did she?” one of them asked Benoit. “Perhaps against her will?”

The old man began to flamboyantly protest his innocence, apparently flattered by the question. One officer heaved a sigh into his notes, writing mechanically, while the other gave the British agent a salute, as if to say, _He who is late to dinner finds his plate turned over_. Bond stalked away in disgust.

#

She was cooperative. She ate the food and drank the wine that he gave her. She held the fork in her left hand, chewed tidily, and broke the bread into small pieces to butter it. Locque studied her with satisfaction; he was starting to know her. Despite her shorts in the street, she was one of these Americans who had studied European culture, who had the relative sophistication to disguise her origin, perhaps being taken for a German or an Australian instead, who rode the metro and the trains after studying the guide books and the schedules, who envied the socialism that was anathema to the good people in her small hometown, in which she had never felt that she belonged. He wondered if she fit in here, with bourgeois European society; he doubted it.

She was very calm; she never screamed, or whined, or argued with him, and in fact did not say a word, and while he saw her shoulders shake and her eyes grow red, she did not sob. That was good, for he loathed messy hysterics. She held her feelings deep inside herself, but she felt them intensely, he could tell. She was silent and noble, but vulnerable, and sensitive—she was just what he wanted.

She chewed and swallowed as if the food was sawdust. When she had finished, she set aside the tray and sat waiting on the bed, silent, and frightened, and suddenly alluring.

His lips drew up at the corners to see her in such terrible anticipation. He waited a moment to draw it out. Then, with a look of _Let’s try this again_ , he again sat next to her and slipped an arm around her waist. He lifted her chin with his hand ungently and pressed his lips to hers, not opening them at first, just feeling the shape of her lips on his. She closed her eyes and complied, but was not wooden. Encouraged, he pulled her to him and stuck his tongue in her mouth. Again, she submitted.

That was all well and good, but women wanted too much kissing. He shoved her back onto the pillows and smiled as her eyes opened wide. She cringed as he leaned over her, but he only reached out to touch her unruly curls.

Again, she was passive. She was obviously trying hard not to give him any reason to strike her. His hand gripped her hair. A little sound escaped her but she endured his pull. Her hair was so long, and perhaps this did not really hurt her.

A tear slipped out of one hazel eye, so he loosened his grip again and sat looking at her.

She sighed, as if about to speak, and he half-expected her to, but she kept silent. On impulse, his hand closed over one of hers and he lifted it to his lips, his eyes meeting hers over the small, white knuckle.

Still smiling at her, his hand squeezed her fingers, hard. “Don’t—please—” she gasped.

He released her fingers.

Her face crumpled a little, at last. “I’ve injured that hand.”

He smiled again at her.

He leaned forward but this time she sat up quickly. Her hands reached for his face so he caught her by the wrists, but her fingers were open and straight, not poised to claw him. She seemed to steel herself but not for combat, so he relaxed his grip, and her small fingers touched his face at the hairline and continued down, running along his eyebrows, and continuing down his temples to his cheeks. He removed his spectacles and allowed her to explore his face. “I’m not stupid,” she husked, looking him timidly in the eyes. “I’m not going to pit my strength against yours. I’m not going to try to fight you, and I won’t ask you to let me go. I just ask that you do not hurt me.”

His brows drew together at her courage. What was this little thing made of? It piqued his curiosity. “Say, ‘Please,’” he commanded.

She paused with her hands in his hair. “Please.” And she said it with dignity, not humiliation—politely, even pleasantly, as if she were asking a shopkeeper. “I don’t object to you personally, as a lover, I just don’t want to be… ” Her voice trailed off as he stared at her. She blushed. To tease her he raised his eyebrows for her to continue. “Please,” she repeated, flushed and avoiding his eyes now. Suddenly, he did want to kiss her. He wanted to hold her down and run his tongue all over her body, and hear her scream that word when he stopped.

“Be a nice girl, and do as I say,” he told her, “and I won’t hurt you.”

“All right. Yes…” she said, looking even more frightened now. She was so tiny and perfect. She could not be a virgin at her age, but he wondered how tight she was, and if he should probe her with his fingers first to see before attempting sex with her. He loathed virgins and likewise hated it when a woman merely endured penetration, lying there like a board, or screwing her eyes up in pain—he wanted a woman to keep her eyes open, to feel, and respond. Kristatos’ trophies had been little prick-teases, all sexy show but not actually enjoying the act very much, staring off into space while the man grunted over her, even checking their watches behind his shoulder, or making faces of distaste.

She untangled her fingers from his hair, but he seized one hand and placed it on his erection. “Don’t stop now,” he told her waggishly, and began to unbutton his shirt. She turned beet red and yanked away her hand. With a scowl he whipped off his shirt and grabbed her wrists again, pulling her beneath him as he straddled her. He placed a hand on her throat and pressed his face very close. “I told you that I will not hurt you if you obey me,” he said sharply. “I don’t like to repeat myself, and you had better listen to me when I tell you something, and remember it from now on.”

She nodded, her eyes wide in her face.

“If I enjoyed giving a woman pain, believe me, you would have been feeling that long before now!”

That did it. She burst into tears. She, however, still did not sob, but her body convulsed with gasps as she put her hands to her face. Well, she had taken longer to lose it than any of the others. He watched her, pleased. Even now she was not really crying—perhaps she never truly did. That was a bonus, for women sobbing was messy, and he hated such slop. He hated whining and begging, or anything undignified, and a screaming woman was no more bearable than a jangling alarm clock. He had chosen well. When he thought that it had gone on long enough, he drew close to her on the bed and pulled her into his arms. She stiffened. “Hey, hey,” he murmured, gentle now. “No need for that.”

Lying next to her, his head propped on one elbow, he rolled the top button of her blouse through its buttonhole, and moved to the next one down. She audibly gulped and stopped her hands in the act of grabbing at his, and he snickered mercilessly. His hand stole inside to stroke her skin. “Shhh,” he breathed in her ear as she trembled, “sweet baby. Don’t be afraid.”

He would be patient. Tonight he would play with her, and draw out the dance, jostling her into fear then allowing her to find steady ground again. Her eyes were so expressive, and he loved how they changed with her moods. She had a musical, sweet voice that he was going to make shout with pleasure.


	8. Housekeeping

Before he returned to the hostel, Bond rang his own hotel to see if there was a message from Bibi. There was none. He walked back to the hostel, and drew up short when he saw every window in Miss March’s room brightly illuminated. “Great. That’s just great,” he muttered. He poked his head in the door, but the concierge was not behind her desk—probably because she was confronting Bibi about why she was in Katherine’s room. However, he heard no voices from the stairwell; the entire building was silent.

Bond ascended the stairs to the second floor, and rapped at Miss March’s door. Bibi flung it open. “James! Look what I found!” She seized his arm and tugged.

Bond allowed her to drag him into the room. “Bibi, what did I say about lights?”

“But I got rid of her! I phoned Brink from here and had her come and ask the landlady to look at a vacant apartment. Then I turned on the lights and started searching. Look at this, look!” She held up a sheet of paper. “I can’t read it—it’s some sort of secret code, isn’t it?”

Bond took it from her. “No, Bibi—it’s Arabic.” Quickly he scanned the letter, translating as best he could.

> I miss our discussions at that back table in the Paris Peasant, but I have decided to return to Iraq for the sake of my sister, since we have no other family. Margaret and Nguyen both went home, too. After you departed for Brussels and before I left New York, Salim heard from his mother, who was forced to flee southern Lebanon by the Israeli air strikes against the PLO. He said that she has been crying on the phone to him, saying that she fears civil war in Lebanon, and telling him not to come home. He sought asylum in Germany instead. So, our group is dispersed, like the surrealists during the occupation of Paris. 
> 
> I thought of New York as our own little Paris, and our table like that of André Breton’s in the Café Prophete on the Left Bank, with Salim like Paul Eluard always talking about the rights of the worker, and Nguyen sketching like Foujita, and you posing for him like Kiki, the queen of Montparnasse, and all of us writing, or reading, or talking late into the night, and feeling like adventurers. That seems so far away now that I am in Baghdad. Salim once told me that Beirut was the Paris of the Mediterranean, but it is no longer home for him. I know that you had talked of visiting it someday, and I had wanted to as well.
> 
> I can’t say that my city offers much in the way of weather, and I won’t compare it to Paris, but if you were to visit—and certainly your father could never get to you there—you would be welcomed as a member of my family. I have not experienced any hostility from my Sunni neighbors, though there have been edicts from the government against the Shiites. I am a Kurd, but as Muslims we should all be brothers, and you know what I think of doctrine—pretty much what you think of your father’s theatrics. At any rate, were I to invoke the Quar’an, it clearly states that there is no people on earth to whom God has not revealed himself, but this gets lost of course in contradictory verses about killing unbelievers, especially Jews. You and I do not believe in anything that divides human beings, but if you were to visit, don’t say anything about being part Jewish, or being an atheist. No one would understand it—they have no concept of having no religion. Simply say, “God is one,” and leave it at that, as I do. As for children, simply say that you have not been so blessed, and that your husband is dead. I don’t like to lie either, but sometimes it is better to.
> 
> I miss our “Parisian” life in New York where we could be ourselves and speak the truth. I think your idea of translating Desnos’ poems into Arabic is a fine one. I could help you find a publisher, should you do it. Do keep in touch, and give me Salim’s address in Germany if he writes you.
> 
> Your friend always,  
> Mustafa Al-Basri

Bond put the letter down. “Time to go, Bibi.” They turned off the lights and walked quietly into the hall. Bond cast a look around, then led the teenager to the stairway.

Fortunately, they arrived at the foyer just as the concierge was escorting Jacoba Brink back to her office. Bond stepped forward resolutely. “I don’t think that this neighborhood is what we are looking for, dear.” The skating coach gaped at him as he laid a firm hand on her arm. “At any rate, we are late getting to the airport to send this child to England.” He nodded to the concierge. “Thank you, we’ll let you know what we decide. Please excuse us.”

He marched the older woman to the door, but it was Bibi who managed to worm her way between the two of them. “Now,” Bond said, “before I take you to the airport, I want you to show me that salon, Bibi.”

#

It was a chilly night but he left the window open, and when in a small voice Katherine told him that even under the blankets she was cold, he merely grunted. It forced her to clutch him for warmth and he reveled in it, and wrapped his long body around hers to stop her trembling. She was so small compared to him, and fragile, like a bird. Whether she enjoyed it or not, she pressed her cheek against his chest and at length he heard her even breathing. He did not sleep, himself, but lay and stared up at the ceiling for a long time.

Katherine opened her eyes in the morning light to see her captor’s face very close to hers. “Got to go,” he said with that biting smile. “Work. But don’t worry, love, I’ll be back this evening. Until then, make yourself at home, and try not to be too lonely without me. There is food, there are books on the bookshelf, there are clothes in the closet that may fit you. My men are here, and they follow my orders and will stay outside, but I _would_ wear something around the apartment from now on.” He leaned into her and gave her a probing, blistering kiss.

When he stood up, Katherine saw that two henchman were standing in the doorway, and that one of the men was smirking at her nakedness. The other, however, looked embarrassed, his face extremely red beneath his very blonde hair. She snatched the sheet to cover her breasts in outrage, feeling the blood rush to her cheeks. “You don’t leave this apartment,” Locque told her pleasantly, and exited with the other two men, leaving Katherine to look around the room.

When she heard the apartment door close, she climbed out of bed, dragging the sheet with her. Her clothes were spilled on the floor. She searched her jacket, and to her relief the envelope of papers, including the stationery that Bond had given her, was still there. She stuck the packet under the bed, and folded her clothes. The enormous walk-in closet held a long line of hangers holding women’s dresses, blouses, skirts, and even a few robes. She chose a robe and wrapped it around her.

Sourly, she noted the size of the outfits: most were too large for her. It was a painful reminder of why she decided not to pursue a career in acting: with the trend moving toward thinner and more idealized ingénues, there would always be another woman who was taller, bustier, more beautiful, and with a smaller nose and a larger mouth than she had. The top of Katherine’s head only came up to Locque’s collarbone. Why did he decide to pick on her, instead of finding another, more beautiful victim as he evidently had in the past?

However, toward the end of the pole she found outfits that seemed promising. There was a wool suit, some blouses, and a few dresses that looked as if they could fit her. They were long party gowns, like most of the outfits. There were also a few pairs of shoes—heels, of course—that were her size. He had apparently done this to a lot of different women.

Tasting bile in her mouth, she shut the door against the thought of another woman her size, in this apartment, and in that bed.

She glanced again around the room, and zeroed in on what must be his bureau. He probably expected her to riffle through his things and perhaps would even use it as an excuse to punish her later, but she was overcome with curiosity and opened the top drawer. It only held a few briefs, some socks, and some ties. The other drawers were nearly empty, merely containing some slacks and shirts, and holding no personal papers or anything that could tell her about him. She shut each drawer without touching anything.

She left the bedroom and roamed the apartment. It too held almost nothing: one desk and chair by the window, no television, a couch in a side room, and a small dining room table with two chairs. The windows were all frosted, and she could not see outside, and the door to the outside was like a bank vault’s. _You don’t leave this apartment_. She did not see how she ever could.

There were bookshelves, but when she scanned them she found a haphazard collection: green leather-bound books holding the writings of Aurelius and Herodotus and the like, the red-covered _World’s One Hundred Best Short Stories in Ten Volumes_ published by Overton—her mother had owned a collection of those—and old book-of-the-month hardcover thrillers by Leon Uris, John Le Carré, Mario Puzo, and Ian Fleming, along with Gage’s _The Mafia Is Not an Equal Opportunity Employer_ and _Eleni_. She could not imagine a predator of women reading a book like _Eleni_ , which detailed the author’s life in their communist-occupied village during the Greek civil war, during which the mother was executed for helping her children escape. Yet the book was there, along with _Sophie’s Choice_ , _The Hiding Place_ , and _Housekeeping_. She wondered if he truly read any of it.

There was a well-stocked bar, although most of the bottles were dusty. Among the ones that were not held Johnnie Walker Scotch—black label. He probably rolled the fingerprints of all his victims, then dusted the bottle for them every night, or measured the amount in the bottle. She did not touch that, either.

A drawer in the cabinet in the bathroom held various bottles and compacts of foundation, eye-shadow boxes, lipstick tubes, blushes, and mascara. She noted in disgust the finger gouges in the pancake—it was probably crawling with bacteria, and since there was no way to tell how old anything was, no way would she touch any of this.

The kitchen was as spare as the bedroom, with few dishes and cups, and it was open to the main room across a counter, but there was coffee, so she made some, and fried two eggs, despite the fact that she was not hungry. She noted that someone, a more health-conscious prisoner than most, had placed some foundation bottles and eye-shadow into the refrigerator. These looked unused and one bottle was of a shade that she could get away with if she used it sparingly. He probably wanted her to make herself up, if the dresses in the closet were any indication. She decided to take the bottle of foundation, and a pristine-looking eye-shadow collection. She could scrape off the end of a tube of the less garish lipstick, and use that as blush as well. At this point in her life she did not expect any miracles from makeup, and if he did not like the results he could just find himself another Eliza Doolittle.

She considered writing a letter to Bond, but she was trapped inside; he had instructed her to place messages outside, so as to be read by a satellite. Perhaps the beam could pick it up inside the apartment, if they were on the top floor, but she had no idea what floor they were on. She decided to wait.

There was no television, but there was a newspaper on the table, and she seized it eagerly. However, there was no mention of a woman missing from Brussels. There was a brief article about an overturned bus there, which had been empty, but had crushed a man. Grace Kelly, the actress and Princess of Monaco, had died, coincidentally from a car crash. U.S. President Ronald Reagan was quoted as saying that he was horrified by the slaughter of unarmed Palestinian refugee families in West Beirut. The condition of actress Mary Martin had stabilized, but silent screen legend Janet Gaynor was still in serious condition in the hospital from their car being hit by a drunk driver. Benoit had lit into Katherine several days before for even mentioning this “unimportant” event regarding “rich old Hollywood starlets.” The Avrocar, a U.S. military experimental aircraft shaped like a flying saucer and built in the 1950s, had been brought to Brussels from the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum, and was going on display soon at the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences. Katherine tried to imagine the aircraft being displayed alongside the dinosaur skeletons; it seemed like an absurd juxtaposition. There was no mention of her father, but she had not expected one.

Bored, and suddenly cold, she decided to shower and try on a few clothes.

The blouses fit her, but the skirts were a trifle large. She decided to try on one of the party dresses in her size. She removed one from its hanger and unzipped the back, and found a surprise sewn into the seam: a large pocket, almost a panel, with a Velcro clasp. Perplexed, she slipped into the dress and managed, with some struggle, to zip it up; once in place, the pocket hung among the inner folds of the skirt and was not visible in the mirror.

Katherine took down all of the dresses in her size, and unfastened them. Each of them had a similar pocket, some larger than others, and in different areas depending on the style of the dress, but all hid a secure pocket within the cloth. Stunned, she unfastened a few of the gowns that were too large for her, and discovered that they had hidden pockets sewn into them, as well.

It was like a secret passed among a harem of women, a line of female smugglers. One of these pockets could hold the stationery that Bond gave her!

Carefully, Katherine re-zipped and re-buttoned the dresses, and hung them back on their hangers so that the pockets would not be revealed. She tried on the small group of dresses, and selected one that fit her well. The stationery fit into its pocket, and she managed to find a piece of cardboard from a cereal box in the kitchen to act as backing. Katherine took the dress off and hung it beside the bed, then wrapped herself in the robe again. Her captor would likely make her wear this dress for him, and she would plead for a dinner on some balcony, or on a rooftop terrace, and send Bond a message then.

Filled with resolve, she picked out _Housekeeping_ from the bookshelf and tried to quiet her mind by reading. The hours ticked by on the clock by the bed, and the light changed in the frosted windows, otherwise time seemed to stand still.

At length she stretched out on the bed and fell asleep.

#

She awoke to a hand stroking her hair. She opened her eyes to see Locque pressed close to her. “Here’s my sleeping beauty,” he said in that deep, deep voice. His eyes showed a glint of warning. To buy time she pretended to blink sleepily while he lay beside her with that predatory silence. Steeling herself then, she reached for him and slid her hands behind his neck. Surprise showed on his face as she pulled him down to her. He kissed her deeply, open-mouthed and tasting like peppermint. She did not expect that.

“Mmmm,” he said, “very nice.”

He got off the bed and cast an unfathomable glance at the open closet holding the outfits that she had tried on and discarded. They were on their hangers as neatly as before, evidently untouched, and he silently groused to himself to find that his latest prey, who at least had the distinction of working for a living, was no more industrious than the rest of his menagerie. The kitchen was immaculate, as well—had she eaten a damned thing? Or had she merely sat on her ass all day, like the rest of them, expecting to be waited on and humored? He pulled the dress from the hanger by the bed and threw it at her. “Put some clothes on,” he commanded. “We are going out. My women dress for dinner and act like ladies.” He left her alone again.

She experimented with the makeup. Nervous because of her secret, she had trouble with the dress the second time. Instead of risking him finding the pocket by asking him to zip her up, she re-zipped the dress and struggled to pull it on over her head.

“But I did not send him after Bond!” she suddenly heard him say from the next room. She peeked out from the bedroom and saw that her captor was on the phone. The Belgian sat immobile, wearing a light grey business suit now, and listening to the quacking from the other end. “But after _Bond?_ What for?” He glowered into space, listening again. Katherine waited, her heart thudding in her chest.

“That stupid cunt! And I needed him tonight,” Locque grumbled. “Please tell me that the car, at least, is—oh, fucking hell!” He hung up. Katherine shrank from the door, pulling desperately at the dress. He flung the bedroom door open on her. “Hurry up.” The skirt fell to the floor, and she gave the bodice a final tug, then turned to him.

“You’re getting your wish and won’t ride in my ‘boxy’ Mercedes tonight—isn’t that what you told my driver?” he remarked, standing in the doorway like a business-suited giant. She could not say that that grey suit flattered him; it made him look severe and sallow. He was pulling on that shining black jacket that he had worn the night before, thus transforming his appearance from that of an undertaker’s to a thug’s. “Both it and he were creamed by a bus yesterday, because he decided to be an idiot. At least, the car can be repaired by tomorrow. The idiot is dead.” What was there to say to that? Katherine decided not to say anything. He eyed her appreciatively. “You more suit the Lancia, anyway. But I will have to drive.” In a parody of gentlemanly protection, he offered his elbow. She approached him with ice in her stomach and took it.

Katherine did not relish the thought of walking past the group of hoodlums who waited at the bottom of the long staircase; they were smarmy and unattractive, clad in suits and black glasses, and her stomach had a gone feeling at the idea of them leering, or even making remarks about her. They did not, however; after one glance their way from Locque they seemed to look through her. Only the blushing henchman from this morning smiled a little at her in a seemingly friendly manner, but there was no one she could trust, and she did not particularly like his near-albino blondeness, either. He was watery-eyed and his nose looked like a potato. “Andre, you and the others are all going to have to mash into the other car,” Locque told him irritably, “and keep an eye out for Lancelot.” Andre nodded, and Katherine pricked up her ears.

“A skateboard!” Locque jeered, and shared the slightest smile with the pale henchman. “What I would not give to have seen that.”

Katherine’s heart fluttered; this would have been just before Bond met her at the library. Perhaps James was looking for her! Pretending to smooth the back of her dress, she felt for the pocket, but it betrayed no bump or ridge.

Locque opened the door to the sleek sports car for her, and then, dropping all pretenses at gallantry, gave her a shove at the small of her back. She climbed in. Katherine did not ask where they were going, having decided that silent compliance was best.


	9. Qasim

The Lancia accelerated easily, stopped on a dime, and zipped around corners without drift. The pastoral landscape gave way to the approach to Brussels. Katherine felt butterflies in her stomach to be back in her own city. She glanced around the car’s interior, and saw Locque’s lips stretch as if to say, _Nice, isn’t it?_ She looked away from him.

“What do I call you?” Katherine asked suddenly, her face turned to the window.

“You don’t use my name,” he rumbled.

She watched out the window with a sinking heart. The car skirted the city and passed the airport, going northeast, toward the Kampenhout Golfclub. At length, he turned up a long driveway and sped toward the large villa at the top of a hill. Katherine turned and saw Locque’s men pull up behind them in the chase car, another sedan that she could not identify. Not trusting Locque to play the gentleman and open the door for her when they had stopped, she yanked at her door handle, only to find her door still locked. She felt a hand lift her hair off her shoulder and pull it up, as if looking at her ear. Locque let out his breath irritably, and her own hand flew to her ear, realizing that she had not put on earrings.

With a dark look at her, he picked up the phone and said, “Surround the place.” Katherine realized then that she had not seen a phone in the apartment, and yet Locque had later spoken on one; perhaps he carried it with him. This one had no dial or buttons, just the sender/receiver; even if she could use this one or squirrel it away to plug in elsewhere, she doubted that she would reach anyone other than Locque’s men.

Her door suddenly popped open as if she were sitting in the back of a police car. “You did not bring a wrap, either,” her escort sneered gallantly as he watched her climb out on her own. She ignored his comment and trudged up the gravel driveway toward the house. He got out and quickly overtook her. They arrived together at the door and were greeted by a Korean doorman who spoke fluent French and ushered them inside; the servant ignored Katherine’s desperate glance at him. Always the gentleman, Locque deserted her side to speak to some men the second they arrived in the foyer. Katherine paused, gaping at the large, cold room.

A bald, middle-aged Egyptian beckoned for Katherine to come near, and she did. “So you’re Locque’s latest,” he said, and there was sympathy in his voice as he extended his hand. She took it. “My name is Qasim and this house is mine. Make yourself at home, my dear, and if there is anything you need, or if I can help you in some way—” and there was an implication in his tone that he could help her in everyone way but one, “—don’t hesitate to ask.”

“Thank you,” said Katherine politely. She sat down in the seat beside him that he offered. “There is something that you could do for me. You could tell me about…well—” At a loss, she pointed to her captor, who had his back to her. “ _Him_.”

“Ah,” Qasim said. “You don’t beat around the bush, do you? Well, first things first: would you like a drink, Miss—?”

“Katherine. I’d love one,” she said gratefully, “a martini, if there is one.”

Qasim smiled and reached out a hand, and a tray of drinks appeared, carried by a diffident butler. He handed her a martini and took one for himself. “Katherine, I would tell you this, first off: if you’re a clever girl, and don’t provoke him or contradict him, you are in no danger. Also, I’m afraid that his methods are well known, so don’t be embarrassed when everyone here skips certain formalities with you. It takes a twisted mind to use a woman’s pleasure against her,” and he saw her blush, “but to my knowledge, he has never harmed a woman, although he will slap one down if she angers him. You will be released eventually, so you may as well make the best of it. He wants power and control most of all, and he does not like a woman who causes trouble for him or who creates scenes. Be silent, be courteous, and be flexible, my dear. Bend. He is the man, and you are the woman. Remember that.” He noted her grimace.

“Is he Emile Locque?”

“That is his name,” Qasim replied. “He may have had other names. One often does, you know, in this business.”

“Is he a drug dealer?” she asked.

“No,” Qasim replied, “he is an enforcer.”

Having recovered from her embarrassment, she now paled a little. “You mean, he’s a contract killer!”

“Yes, he is that, but that is only part of the job, Katherine. He will use fear and the threat of force to coerce someone; if that does not work, he will use actual force. When he kills, it is a job for him, the result of being given orders, although there have been a few exceptions in which he took matters into his own hands. I will admit that Locque enjoys the kill—he is known for that—but he does not randomly execute people on whim, like that lunatic in Pennsylvania who has been in the news recently.* Locque _is_ a man to be feared. Show him respect, and it will go easier on you.”

“What does he want?” she asked.

Qasim smiled at her. “Oh, if I could answer that, I would, my dear. There have been many before you, and there will be many more. Only Locque knows Locque.”

Feeling the Belgian’s eyes on her suddenly from his place across the room, Katherine looked down at her drink. Qasim leaned close. “Perhaps you would like to ‘freshen up,’ before the evening truly begins.” At her nod, he rose with her and escorted her down a hallway to an elaborate bedroom. Surprised, she drew back, but then saw that he was indicating the washroom at the other end. “And feel free to take anything from the dresser or the closet, Katherine. It is nearly October and the night will be cold.” He gave her a slight bow, then left her alone in the sumptuous bedroom, clutching her martini glass.

When he was gone, Katherine set down her drink and shut and locked the bedroom door, and strode decisively to the washroom. She locked that door behind her. There were bars on the windows, and no other way out, but beneath this window was a small roof that extended over a tiled patio with a pool. Katherine unzipped her dress and stepped out of it, and opened the pocket. She returned to the bedroom for a pen, and noted the bars on these windows, too.

She wrote her message to Bond, sealed it in its envelope, and carefully reached through the bars to lay it on the roof outside:

> KATHERINE
> 
> WITH E LOCQUE? RAPIST
> 
> QASIM’S HOUSE, 2-3 HOURS
> 
> L SAYS DRIVER ACTED ALONE
> 
> 6 MAN STAFF
> 
> AFRAID

She hooked the curved end of a wire coat hanger into her zipper and climbed quickly back into her dress, managing to zip it up by pulling on the hanger. She went quickly to the jewelry case on the little makeup table in the bedroom to see what would match her dress. She chose pearls rather than diamonds, in part because she thought that diamonds dominated her coloring, and also because, Kansas being so close to the South, they reminded her of rhinestones, which she had seen on every other woman while growing up, including her mother. In the closet, she contemplated the wraps: most were, in fact, furs, and more appropriate for an arrival than during a function, but she could not resist the short, black furred piece that resembled a vest. She put it on.

She was not surprised to hear a sharp rap on the door, and opened it to follow Locque back to the main room. As they walked, he caught her by the arm and hissed, “Well, some little lady found the sable!”

Katherine blanched, realizing.

“Listen, babe, when someone offers you a gift, do you usually take the most expensive item in the closet?”

“I’ll change it—” She began to turn to the bedroom.

He blocked her with an arm around her waist. “Don’t bother.” With a finger he set her hanging pearl earring to swinging. “It all goes perfectly.”

When they entered the front room with his arm around her, Katherine steeled herself and returned with a direct glance the outright staring that was directed her way. Self-conscious, people lowered their eyes and turned to each other, resuming normal conversation. Locque gave her a pat that she interpreted as a directive and so she approached the nearest cluster of adults and, mustering her courage, bestowed them with a smile. “Hello.” She did not consider herself to be the physical equal of any of the women but the results were gratifying; the women smiled back and the men brightened as if she were the only woman in the room, when in fact she was the shortest and, to her mind, the plainest.

She engaged in small talk, which she had always found excruciating. It was a little easier now, because no one knew any details about her. She answered their tentative questions honestly and concealed nothing. It became obvious to her that she was talking to drug dealers, corrupt businessmen, one or two errant politicians, and nobility who had lost then regained—illegally—their wealth. The women themselves had no careers.

The servants began to usher the guests into the next room for dinner, and Katherine saw Locque abruptly whirl and look for her. She began to follow everyone else instead of waiting for him. She was the only woman walking unescorted and she noted the attention that this caused.

“Excuse me, Miss,” one of the men said politely. “You seem to have dropped this.”

With as much nonchalance as she could muster, she turned to him and smiled. She reached out for the small photograph that he held, but of course Locque got there first and took it in his long fingers. Katherine noted the reaction of the other man; he seemed cowed, and did not protest Locque’s action. Everyone nearby had stopped talking and were looking at Katherine with stricken expressions.

Locque glanced at the photograph, then at her. He held it up. “Boyfriend?”

She drew in her breath; she could handle this. “Not anymore.”

“Did you betray him?” His voice sounded as if he was laughing at her.

“No, but I dumped him. I did him a favor,” she declared boldly, lifting her chin.

It was always a guess as to what Emile Locque was really thinking—his face barely changed—but he did not become angry or mocking, as she expected, and he did not give the photograph back to her; he took her arm in front of everyone and whisked her away to the balcony overlooking the city lights. She gripped the wrought iron balustrade on either side of her and faced him. He was looking at the photograph. “Tell me.”

“There’s nothing to tell.”

He brandished the photo so that she saw the intense face on it. “I said, tell me.” There was a harsh edge to his voice now.

Katherine sighed, looking at the photograph. “I don’t love him, but I once did. We rarely fought, but now that I look back on it, he was always correcting me. We met in our early twenties; we both got older and more used to each other, and I became tired of being corrected.”

“Corrected about—?” He waited, she thought, for her answer to pounce on it like a panther.

“Eating red meat; wearing flashy clothes—thought they weren’t really—I don’t know, speaking up about things…just not being more like him. He did not drive, and hated cars. I agreed with him about the damage to the environment, but I got sick of hearing about how evil automobiles were all the damn time. He said, ‘I hate cars,’ more than he told me he loved me. He would say, ‘I should remember to tell you that you are pretty,’ but he never remembered to. Then, I went to college, and he was not happy about it. He had never finished himself—”

Locque’s face contorted and it was an abrupt change from his usual blankness. “‘I should remember to tell you that you are pretty?’ What sort of a fool thinks that way? Was this man an idiot?”

“He just was not very demonstrative, you know—repressed. I made him uncomfortable, I guess, although he was not like that in the beginning. He’s a very good person, actually…just way, way too wholesome for me.” It was weird to be interrogated by this character, and to hear herself suddenly gush in return. _That’s what he does_ , she suddenly realized, starve a woman of attention so that she opened up at his slightest encouragement. _I should save my conversation for the others and mix_ , Katherine told herself. All but Qasim seemed to fear Locque, but perhaps someone here would help her.

He handed her the photograph. “He just did not know what to do with you!” There was a glint in his eye that chilled her. He gave her a small smile, then again offered his arm. They rejoined the crowd inside.

#

Looking at the electronic printout on his wristwatch, Bond groaned. The satellite could only deliver a garbled message, with the letter X exchanged for others, and only a vague location of where Katherine. The magic stationery was meant to alert him, not to send detailed missives. He lifted the phone to call M’s office for a more precise reading. In the phone booth, he kept his eyes on the hair salon that Bibi had pointed him to. Inside, figures moved like spectral forms in the artificial light as the street grew darker.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *George Emil Banks.


	10. Power

At dinner, the conversation was halting in Locque’s presence, with many of the women openly frightened of him, and many of the men circumspect or wry, cloaking their interest in his latest victim. Qasim, seemingly indifferent to Locque’s presence, began to draw out Katherine. He mentioned that he, Qasim Bayoumi, owned _Bayoumi’s_ , a complex of salons and shops in Brussels. He rather arrogantly made it sound like it was better than _Harrods_ in London. Having nothing else to talk about, Katherine talked about her life in the March Ministry, her running away to go to college, and her work at the library for her semester of study abroad for graduate school. They were all too willing to listen to her stories. It seemed that she was as exotic to them as they were to her. She was a common person, someone authentic, rendered in their world only as characters in movies, in politicians’ speeches, and in clichés. As Katherine talked, she noticed that most of the women relaxed and became individuals as well; they were more intelligent that she gave them credit for. Their arm-candy act was just that—an act. When they commented, they became even more interesting.

She told them what being a librarian in the United States was really like, all of the things that happened to her that she had not expected: having to approach two men who were actually trading blows and tell them to stop; having to summon security when one of the men told her that she could not tell him to stop yelling (“A man told you, a _librarian_ , not to shush him?” asked an incredulous guest. “Yes, indeed!” Katherine replied); having to ban a group of chess enthusiasts from the library for a month after a series of loud arguments erupted during their games; helping homeless patrons, some with young children, find a shelter for the night; chasing down the neglectful parents of small children, some crying, some mischievous, left alone among the shelves; lecturing male teens not to enter the women’s restroom; finding a bandage for a patron who did not realize that his hand was bleeding; removing patrons who repeatedly ignored the rules about not eating; and dutifully watching the duffle bag of the homeless man who politely approached her to explain that someone had given him food, and who took it outside to eat it as she instructed.*

In contrast to what this crowd thought of the job, librarians in the United States were expected to offer classes in English language instruction and citizenship training to recent immigrants; to aid children and teenagers with their homework; to help the destitute find help and to help the unemployed find jobs; to read stories to children; to help with job applications and resumes and, without offering real legal advice, to help with tax forms and unemployment claims. The guests at the table were astonished to hear that the homeless men were among her best patrons, the first to report troublemakers, because they regarded the library as almost their home. Most librarians, she informed a rapt audience, were politically liberal and socially progressive, and had multiple interests ranging from knitting to caving. “I even published a book of surrealist poetry,” Katherine bragged in conclusion. She did not add that it was a small printing of only a thousand, and never had a second printing.

“Really? What is the title?” asked the man, Marcus, who had retrieved her old photo, and who was being closely watched by Locque because he could barely hide his admiration.

“ _Malaise-ia_ ,” she responded proudly.

Locque, who was sitting directly across from her, was looking at her with his inscrutably blank expression. He betrayed no emotion and yet she was sure that he was noting everything that she said. Feeling buoyed by the reaction she received, she lifted her chin in his direction—he probably thought that she was weak, easily dominated, just because she was not openly defying him or shouting at him like Ripley from _Alien_ in his apartment. She was by nature quiet and amenable, but that did not mean that she had no courage.

“I’ve always said that men lost out by preventing women from having careers, turning them into sex objects instead,” concluded Qasim. “The surrealists preferred eastern cultures.” Katherine was annoyed with him suddenly; his comment seemed disingenuous, designed to placate her, as if he were gleaning just enough information about her to know how to manipulate her.

“What a load of crap!” Locque suddenly burst out in his deep voice. It made everyone turn to him. Locque wagged a finger toward Katherine. “Poor women always had to work. It’s called being a mother. You girls should thank your lucky stars that you are regarded as sex objects. There are only two ways for women to be ‘liberated’—remove your clothes, and remove the fear of pregnancy. Bikinis, and birth control—be glad. Otherwise, you become nothing but _reproductive_ objects, and that’s worse.

“A good portion of the men on this planet mutilate a girl so that when she feels no sexual pleasure, _never_. She is a captive virgin until she becomes a mother. Too bad if it hurts—they regard pain as a rite of passage, and think that westerners are soft for seeking creature comforts. Not only that—the men cover her from head to toe and don’t let her move freely, don’t teach her to read, or give her much of an education at all. Now, tell me: how sick do men have to be when they cannot stand to look at a beautiful woman? When it so offends them that they beat her with canes for showing herself, even if she’s a ninety-year-old grandmother?”

“That’s just a certain segment of Islam,” Qasim objected.

Locque shook his head. “It’s not just in Islam, it’s certain Christian and animist areas of Africa as well. And that ‘certain segment’ of Islam is growing: look at the Ayatollah Khoemeini. Did you read that quote by him? ‘There is no fun in Islam.’ Now, there is one sick fuck for you! What a joyless, empty, utilitarian life men like him create, especially for women. Compared to him, I’m Richard the Lionhearted.” He gave Katherine a taunting smile. Some at the table glanced her way in mortification but, flustered and angry, she merely looked back at him. “ _All_ women dream of a dominant man—but not a mullah. He has to be a combination of power and finesse. You girls will only find that in the West, from a western man.”

“You sound more like Saladin,” argued an increasingly brave Marcus, who was hitting the wine frequently.

“Well, when they battled, Saladin was so impressed by Richard’s fighting skills that he sent Richard his own horse to take him out of danger. Later, they negotiated a truce.” Locque raised his eyebrows at Katherine when she stared at him for his sudden garrulousness.

“Women were as much a part of the revolution in Iran as the men,” Qasim argued, intent upon the original subject. “You saw photos on the news of them rallying in the streets, their heads uncovered…some of them willingly covered their hair…”

“And then the men _made_ them cover up, whether they wanted to or not, and started imposing restrictions on travel, divorce, and inheritance, despite the fact that the Koran spells out their rights in those areas,” Locque replied. “All religion is bullshit, anyway—all religions are contradictory, and all can be used to oppress anyone, in particular women. And who is surprised by that? Women are, by nature, easy to exploit. Religion is whatever its believers do. So is politics, and that is all religion is. Power. That is what life is about.”

“What do you think, Katherine?” Qasim asked. Marcus gawked at her in admiration that she suddenly found very irritating. She did not want to talk any longer; she wanted to be alone and decompress.

She decided to quote from Antonin Artaud: “‘No one has ever written, painted, sculpted, modeled, built, or invented except literally to get out of hell.’ And that is the same for men and for women.”

Locque replied with a literacy that surprised her again. “‘I choose the child-woman not in order to oppose her to other women, but because it seems to me that in her alone exists a state of absolute transparency, the _other_ prism of vision, which women obstinately refuse to take into account, because it obeys very different laws whose disclosure male despotism must try to prevent at all costs.’ And that is your André Breton saying this, my dear, not me. You wrote surrealist poetry. Breton would consider that a child’s game compared to poetry written by men. Note that I am not giving my own opinion.”

“Of course you’re not giving your opinion; you never really have an opinion,” argued Marcus. Everyone else but Qasim and Katherine was sitting like a statue. “You just play games with people’s heads.”

“Breton discovered Frida Kahlo,” someone else objected.

Katherine pounced gladly on Locque. “But my Lenora Carrington had a pat answer for that quote by André Breton, and it was, ‘Bullshit! All that means is that you’re someone else’s object.’”

A few people laughed. Locque merely looked at her with a twisting of his lips. “There were female surrealists?” Qasim asked.

“Of course there were! Dora Maar, Merit Oppenheim, Lee Miller…”

“They were mostly artists’ models,” Locque snorted.

“Why is it that, when women who are artists become lovers of male artists, they are regarded only as artists’ models? Lee Miller was also a photojournalist during World War II. She followed the Allies for _Condé Nast_ ,” Katherine retorted. “She covered the Blitz in England, the liberation of Paris, the battle for Alsace, and Buchenwald and Dachau. She even took a photo of herself bathing in Hitler’s bathtub in his Munich apartment.”

“And she died embittered and depressed,” Qasim argued, “from what she saw during the War.”

“Maybe it was that, or maybe the fact of her having been raped by a neighbor at age eight, and contracting gonorrhea, had something to do with it, too. Girls,” she concluded, seeing the stunned looks, “let’s thank our lucky stars for dominant, western men!”

The women smiled at her, some more emphatically than others, while someone whistled beneath his breath, and a few men applauded. Qasim was beside himself with laughter. Locque merely put a finger to his lips and looked at her.

“Tell me, Katherine,” said Marcus, who she now wished would shut the hell up, “what do you think that it should say on Locque’s tombstone?”

From the ashen faces around the table, one would think that he had joked about assassinating the Pope. However, her questioner smiled at her and now, she smiled back and really tried to think of something witty. She was being given a chance to skewer Locque in front of everyone. To buy time, she imitated him, placing a finger beneath her lips—and in one of those rare moments, after seconds of floundering, she came up with an answer in the moment. “I think that it should say, ‘You should see the other guy.’”

None of the women laughed, and most of the men twisted their lips uncomfortably, but a few, including her questioner and Qasim, burst into laughter. Locque was smiling just slightly with his eyes locked on her; he was either amused as well, or contemplating her punishment. She decided not to speculate on which.

The party broke up after dinner, and she could not name what the purpose of this evening had been. Sensing that she was soon to be dragged out the door, she took off the earrings and laid them beside the sable stole on a table in the foyer. “She’s somewhat of an enforcer, herself!” joked one man in a low voice before the woman on his arm discreetly shushed him. “I would have thought a distant Bouvier relative,” he added. “She has the bearing for it, and certainly the looks.”

“Please. She might hear you. The poor thing!” hissed his companion.

“Maybe not. She might be more than a match for Locque.”

“Locque is a monster.”

Qasim extended his hand to Katherine, rousing her from her eavesdropping. “It has truly been a pleasure, my dear. I hope to see you again, very soon.”

She took his hand. “Thank you, Qasim. Thank you very much.”

Locque took her arm and escorted her outside—with much more chivalry this time. He pressed his lips to her ear, and she soon learned the reason for it. “‘You should see the other guy’—I ought to hold you down on the hood of my car and spank you thoroughly for that! What a turn on!” He gave her a wide smile that made her knees feel like sand. She walked carefully on her heels to the car.

Aware that the rest of the people in the house watched them, Katherine stopped and stood primly by the passenger door. Locque strode to the driver’s side, opened his door, and started to get in, but when he saw her waiting passively, he stood up again. He pointed at the passenger door for her to open it. His eyes narrowed when she did not move.

“You are the man, and I am the woman,” she simpered innocently, despite her churning stomach.

Locque glowered at her, then opened the car door and swung his lanky frame into the driver’s seat. He shut his door, then leaned over and opened her door for her, throwing it wide. Before Katherine could step inside, he had angled his long body across the seat and seized her arm. He dragged her roughly into the vehicle, and planted her into her seat with an ungallant _thump_. Katherine laughed at the expression on his face—she could not help it—and pulled her own door shut, then quickly leaned her head on his shoulder before he could strike her. With a disgusted look at her, Locque popped the clutch and drove off.

After a few moments he seemed to have cooled down enough to smile again. “You certainly charmed Qasim.”

She snorted. “Somehow, I don’t think that’s too difficult. Smarmy doesn’t begin to describe him. That Marcus, too.” She pulled away from him and sat staring at the Belgian, noting his profile, his full lips, his Roman nose.

He glanced sideways at her. “What are you looking at?”

“Qasim was talking to one of his men earlier, about you. I could tell. He said something in Arabic.”

“So? I heard it. Everyone was right there.”

“Did you understand what he said?”

His brow furrowed a little. “Did _you_?”

“What do you think I studied for my undergrad?” she asked. “Political Science, and I minored in Arabic. I’ve taken four years of Modern Standard, and even some _Fus’ha_.”

“What did he say, then?” Locque asked.

Katherine steeled herself, and then replied, “If you would pull up to the curb at the next corner, and left me off, I’ll tell you through the window before I go home.”

The corners of his mouth turned up. “Well, well. A tit for tat. And how do I know that you speak Arabic?”

She chose her words carefully. “Because I heard enough to learn from Qasim that you have a connection with someone in the Soviet Union named Gogol, that someone else named Kriegler is telling the Greek authorities that you were killed in Albania, and that you expect to receive special orders soon.”

Locque slowed the car. To Katherine’s amazement, he did pull over to the curb. When the car stopped, she released her seat belt and yanked hopefully at the door handle. It moved in her hand, but the door did not open.

Locque’s hand reached over and clamped onto her shoulder, painfully. With slow deliberation, he pulled her to face him, and his face, when she gathered the nerve to look at him, was contorted with anger. “Now, look, you little wiseacre. Don’t get an attitude, and don’t try to play games with me. You are not cleverer than I am. I shall not bargain with you. I have been doing this for a long time, and even if what he said was important, I’ll find out what it was in the course of time. I live by my wits, and you had better learn to live by yours.”

He pushed her back and drove on. Shakily, Katherine fastened her seat belt again and stared out of the passenger window.

“And don’t you fucking pout!” he added.

Katherine turned toward the dashboard—for fear of bursting into tears she could not look at him—and, taking two fingers, shoved the corners of her mouth upward. There was a silence as she waited to see what he would do. What he did was reach out his hand again and grasp the inside of her thigh.

At a loss, Katherine idly watched the car behind him, noting its boxy exterior. She could not be sure, but it looked like the left back side had some damage. The car continued to gain on theirs. It was a Mercedes, she realized, and Locque removed his hand. She glanced over at him.

“I see it,” he said sharply. The headlights behind them were bright enough now to illuminate the interior of their car. Katherine clutched the handle above the passenger door as Locque made a sharp turn to the left. His sports car, with its rear engine and low center of gravity, made the turn at a higher speed than the vehicle behind them, but their pursuer managed to gain on them in the straightaway. Moreover, there was another car behind the one pursuing theirs; it was smaller and red, a sports car itself, and very angular, like a Lotus. She felt eyes on her and saw that he had turned to look at her; his face was as wooden as ever, but some of the harsh lines had softened, and his eyes gazed at her with a strange care. “Hold on,” he told her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * True stories. Most of them actually happened to me.


	11. The Confrontation

Locque heaved the Lancia through a series of turns that made Katherine think that rolling downhill in a barrel would be child’s play. Gun shots from behind them hit the mirrors and other parts of the car that she could not see. She slid down in her seat and hugged her knees to her chest, placing her feet on the dashboard. He gave her an approving glance. “You’re safe there. I have a layer of bricks, mind you, between us and the rear engine. I had to strip this car down to almost nothing to put it in.”

She felt like telling him that their pursuers could still shoot out the tires, but she was too afraid of throwing up.

Locque made one more wild turn and then braked, hard. The Lancia squealed to a stop and the Mercedes screeched past. She did not remember him opening the driver’s window but he aimed his gun out of it and squeezed out four shots. Two figures in the other car convulsed; the other two exited and took cover behind the vehicle, guns drawn. Locque popped the clutch again and roared around to the other side of the Mercedes. Katherine saw that her window was moving downward and ducked. Her captor, now using his right hand, aimed a few more shots out of it, and then swerved to avoid the Lotus which was already turning for another chase. There was a tremendous _bang_ and she covered her ears. Now it was the Lancia being pursued by the Lotus, with the Mercedes bringing up the rear. “Bond can be my buffer,” Locque gloated.

He reached under the driver’s seat, and his face changed into an expression that chilled her. He looked very angry, suddenly. He put his hand back on the gun in his lap. Rapidly, she tried to remember: four shots, then two, he had taken.

Katherine realized in shock that they were no longer driving on the street; they were tearing over grass. Moreover, her side of the car was riding very low. “I have one bullet left,” said Locque. “Those bastards took my other gun. Sit up. Take off that seat belt.”

“No way!”

“Take off that seat belt, or stay here and get riddled by bullets. They hit a tire. And they _will_ shoot you, my poet.”

She released the belt and he rode the flattened tire as long as he could. He stopped, her door suddenly popped open, and she was unceremoniously pushed out. He exited from her side with a fist in her hair. Holding her in an iron grip, he ran with her over the grass. She saw the round, flat, flying-saucer-like Avrocar illuminated by lights and surrounded by a rope barrier—so they were displaying it outside the museum, on the plaza, and not inside with the dinosaurs.

Locque dragged her to the ground and lay partly on top of her, his gun at the ready. He was shielding her with his heavy frame, so she decided to keep still. The Lotus, framed by bullets from the Mercedes, shrieked over the grass. The bullets were bouncing off of it and she heard Locque make an incredulous exhalation. A barrage of shots from the Mercedes sent one of the wheels rolling off. It did not look real, but the wheel spun away like a coin and the Lotus ground to a halt without it, the back end rising high then falling hard. “I employed Hable for a crack shot, but not at me,” Locque said ruefully.

The Lotus sat silently, completely dark in the darkening plaza. Slowly, the two figures exited the Mercedes with guns drawn and approached it from either side. Locque clamped a hand on the back of her neck and waited. The men covered both doors with their guns, and waited, too. There was no sign of life from the Lotus. Katherine saw instead some strange movement behind it.

Locque convulsed in silent laughter at the sight of James Bond climbing out of a small hatch at the back of the Lotus while the two men still stared quizzically at the windows. Katherine was amazed at how quickly and silently Bond could run; in the space of a few seconds he had covered the ground between the Lotus and the Avrocar before the two henchmen realized that he had escaped. Too late, they fired at the agent, but he had already climbed onto the experimental craft and, fumbling at a panel near the center blister, opened the hatch and was shielding himself with the door. As Bond lowered himself inside, Locque squeezed the back of Katherine’s neck and rose. He led her toward the craft, even as she shied from its grinding metallic noise, its weird hiss. “What—?”

Locque lifted her onto the flat metal body and climbed on himself, stretching his body over hers. She found a ring in the body and slipped her arms through it, and his hands gripped it too. The Avrocar levitated, paused, then tipped and accelerated weirdly and very suddenly toward the two armed men. They ran for cover.

“We can’t stay on this thing!” Katherine yelled in panic. This was worse than the car chase.

“We’ll be fine. This thing never got more than fifteen feet off the ground.”

She clung to that metal ring and closed her eyes, arguing in her mind that fifteen feet would be fatal if she landed on her head. There was something wrong with the craft’s movement; it was wobbling, not flying level as a flying saucer would. Locque uttered a curse and lifted the hand that rested on her. They were traveling at high speed over the plaza toward Parc Leopold. Then the aircraft banked abruptly and turned almost on edge. Making strained sounds in her throat, Katherine hung on for dear life.

The Avrocar leveled again, then wobbled, and then banked abruptly and spun. This time the force was almost enough to make her lose her grip. She heard Locque swear again, more emphatically this time—he sounded almost frightened. The craft leveled again, then spun suddenly and tipped, grinding an edge against the ground. She felt Locque’s hand on her wrist and could no longer hang on to the ring. They both dropped to the ground, which fortunately was a mere three feet beneath them. The Avrocar whined and rose again, leveling off. They could see one of the gunmen retreat to the Mercedes.

She did not need Locque’s grip to tell her to run from the thing. It was humming and buzzing and releasing exhaust from various ports like a snorting bull. Her heels mashed into the ground and she stumbled, but he and she managed to get out of the thing’s way before it went seesawing, at long last, into the Mercedes, which crumpled like tin foil. The man behind the wheel was crushed as Locque’s driver had been. The once-top secret U.S.-Canadian hovercraft gave a pathetic grinding noise, and was still. The other gunman was nowhere to be seen.

Free of his hand, Katherine tried to outdistance Locque and run toward the Avrocar but it was impossible; he took one long, swinging step for every three of hers. His hands easily closed on her again. “Get down.” Before she could obey, he pushed her to her knees and had aimed his gun at a figure that emerged from behind a tree. The man collapsed.

The hatch of the Avrocar opened and Bond climbed out. “James!” Katherine yelled for him, but Locque dragged her to her feet again and, with a sardonic smile at the agent, aimed his empty gun at her head. Katherine opened her mouth but Locque’s large hand covered it. Seeing Bond lower his gun, she bit into Locque’s fingers, but the assassin only laughed. He began to back away, pulling her with him. Bond set his jaw and narrowed his eyes at Locque. Katherine’s voice came out only in muffled squeals as Locque dragged her from the park.

When Bond was out of view, he lowered the gun but did not uncover her mouth. She struggled to free herself, but it was like trying to escape from a straitjacket, and he pinched the flesh of her cheek between his thumb and first finger. It hurt. “Just keep walking,” he told her, and led her to an overpass. Below, a train’s whistle signaled its immanent arrival over the tracks below. “We are going to jump” he said, looking down at her from his towering frame. “Now, I can push you off and let you take your chances at safely hitting the train’s roof, or you can hang on to me while _I_ jump, and we’ll both make it. Choose, right now!”

She slipped her arms around his neck.

When the sleek, silver snake of the train covered the tracks, he jumped with her clinging to him. He landed like a cat, on all fours, his feet and hers hitting slightly before his hands did. Immediately he pressed her to the cold metal and held her so that she could turn onto her stomach. “Just lie still.” Again, his body was on top of hers and securely held her in place, despite her dizziness at the countryside flashing past them. Terrified of the prospect of falling off, she gripped the metal and closed her eyes. Above them and behind, on the overpass, Bond arrived at the barrier and watched the train carry the two human figures away into the night.

#

After several stops, Locque told her that they would climb down at the next one and to prepare to move quickly. As the train slowed, he removed his weight from her and helped her to crawl toward the ladder at the back of the car. He climbed down first, then stretched his arms up to assist her. With his help, Katherine dropped to the ground.

She had trouble staying on her feet; her legs felt numb. He placed a steadying hand on her arm and led her away from the track. “Jesus Christ, your army should have just dangled that toy from a cable—it would be steadier!” he said in disbelief. “No wonder the project was discontinued. I have to hand it to old Geriatrics Pants for being able to fly it at all! I’m glad I got to see it.” He kept on speaking as if she were not there—or if he was talking to someone else. “I thought him going down that ski jump in downhill skis was a fluke, but I guess his employers know how to pick them. I will never underestimate Bond again—it’s been too much fun.”

Seeing only a deserted train station and no prospect of help, she followed as he hauled her by the arm into the darkening forest.

At length, Locque started and looked around quickly for her. She stopped in her tracks and looked at him quizzically. His blank expression changed into slight annoyance, and she wondered if he had forgotten, despite his grip on her, that she was with him. He yanked her forward. “Walk in front of me.” She did, holding up her dress from the brambles.

He made a sound in his throat that sounded like a chuckle. “Why don’t you _take that off_? Like your shorts, the other day?” The next sound that he made was definitely some kind of laughter.

“It’s cold out here,” she pointed out. She did not add that she was not wearing underwear, for hers had still been wet from washing and she was not going to borrow another woman’s.

“Hm,” he grunted, and she did not know what that was supposed to mean. He walked easily over the treacherous ground on his long legs and seemed warm enough in that padded jacket, although she had noticed that his gait was not quite even, as if he were nursing an injury. She was stumbling badly and often had to wrench her balled-up dress from the catch of surrounding branches. It _was_ cold; her bare arms were freezing.

He made no move to assist her. “Don’t you scream, ever?” he asked, not without a trace of humor.

What was she supposed to say to that? “I never think of it in time.”

He began to laugh—in his own way, making hissing noises. She bristled. “What is the use, anyway?” she added. That increased the hissing. “What are you, a snake? Do you laugh, _ever_?”

“Oh, you—” he wiped an eye, “—are too much!” He grinned at her. “And people call me a ‘dark horse.’ And yes, a ‘snake’ as well. They call me many things.” He laid his hands on his shoulders and looked down at her, smiling. “What do they call you, dark horse?”

“Katherine.”

“Ahh—” He shoved her identity aside with a wave of his hand. “I know your _name_.” He gave her a pat. “Keep going. It’s not much farther.”

“I’m about to faint. We could stop and build a fire,” she argued. He did not reply. She jammed her heels into the ground with each step to anchor herself. “I know how.”

“We have to get out of here before dark. You’ll be hungry in the morning, and I don’t want to listen to female wanking.”

Katherine did not think that she ever wanted to touch food again after that experience. “I’ll catch fish. I hear a stream. I’ll catch fish with my hands, and cook them on a rock by the fire.”

“We are not stopping and building a fire, Pocahontas, and your pretty ass would not last six hours out here.”

“I would, too! A friend of mine taught me how to tickle fish. You lay your hands on the stream’s bottom in a calm part and wait. The fish swim over your hands, and you lightly stroke them with your fingers. Then you grab. It’s a survival technique.” She did not know why she was suddenly intent on arguing with him.

He sounded amused again. “You are making this up.”

“No, I’m not.”

“If you’re so handy, perhaps when we get back to the apartment I shall put you to work.” At her answering silence, he gave her a wicked smile. He halted her with his hand. “Here we are.”

They were at the edge of the forest, where it gave way to an immense, manicured lawn. A large house—enormous, really—stood perhaps five hundred yards away at the end of a long driveway. There were lights on in the windows, but Locque pulled her along the forest’s edge, away from the driveway. “Over there.” He pointed to some stables, beyond which another structure stood. It looked to be another house, smaller and perhaps older, with a series of outbuildings, including a carriage house. “What is this place?” she asked.

“This is my home, pet, or was. The carriage house and the grounds around it remain mine. My mother left it to me, and there is nothing that my father can do about it.” He seemed to relish telling her this. She noticed that a single sedan was parked near the house. For some reason it struck her as a rental; no one in a house like that would drive such a drab vehicle.

“Your mother is dead?” she asked automatically, her mind racing at the thought that Bond could be so near.

“Well, obviously, genius!”

“Master Emile?” inquired a man’s voice.

Locque whirled to face the candle’s flame that was moving toward them. A shadow raised the light to illuminate an elderly man’s face. Locque visibly relaxed.

“They told me that you were dead, sir.”

“Not yet, Jens,” replied the assassin with real affection. That genuine smile jolted his face into life, and made it suddenly handsome, devastatingly so—like that of Mr. Elegant’s. _So, he really is Emile Locque_ , Katherine thought.

The elderly man was looking at her. “The lady looks cold.”

“She is, and she is tired. I would take her to the carriage house.”

Jens nodded, and turned to lead the way. Locque slid an arm around her and assisted her across the yard like a real gentleman. She decided to reward his gallantry by embracing his waist; besides she was exhausted, and needed his support to continue. “You know that you are not welcome at the main house,” said the servant.

“When was I, ever?” Locque replied, almost flippantly. “But yes, I know.”

“I have kept your room as it was, Master Emile. No one objects, and your family never visits this part of the estate these days. I am afraid that your father’s fortunes have significantly declined.”

Locque gave an exhalation of breath that could have been a reaction to this, or not. The servant turned to look at him. “And I am sure you know that there is a visitor, sir—a British national come to question your father. He asked about you. That alerted me to your presence here, so I kenneled the dogs. He’s only just arrived.”

Locque glanced sideways at Katherine, but did not reply.

They entered the carriage house and climbed a set of wooden stairs. The servant pushed open a door and bowed a little to Katherine. She was astonished at the attractive, oak-paneled room, with a desk, a bed, a rather large fireplace—without a fire—and bookcases. Jens lit an oil lamp at the desk and filled the room with the warm yellow light. In it, he was revealed to be younger and more hearty than she had thought; he was more middle-aged than elderly, and almost the size of Locque. She noticed the pens and the pad of paper on the desk. “Jens, stay here and watch her,” Locque instructed. “I will go and speak to Bond.”

“I could discreetly bring him a message from you, sir.”

Locque shook his head. “Bond will come looking for me. My father will allow it—but without weapons on the grounds. I’ll find him first, never fear.” He pointed to Katherine, who was folding a piece of paper in her lap. “The girl is not to leave this room. I don’t care what she tells you. Do whatever you must to prevent her if she tries to.”

He turned and looked out of the window at the house, and Katherine touched Jens’ hand. Jens looked down at the note she had slipped him:

> I AM A PRISONER.

“I shall return shortly,” Locque said, and Jens replied distractedly, “Very good, sir.” The servant watched the man leave, then turned to Katherine. She sat very straight, expectantly.

“Shall I make you some tea, Miss?” the servant asked. “I have everything we need here. I could light a fire.”

“No, thank you.”

Jens crumpled the note and threw it into the cold fireplace. “I am a prisoner too, my lady,” he said in a mournful voice. “I am too. And while I do have my orders concerning you, I tell you truthfully: whoever you are, and wherever the master takes you, you are far more fortunate than I can hope to be.” She gaped at him. Jens looked down at her with sincere sympathy. “The younger master—he is fearsome, and I do not minimize what he has become, but the man who owns this estate, who lives in that house,” and he pointed to the distant lights, “is a truly _evil man!_

“Due to him, you are not safe here. That man will have no compassion for you if you were to appeal to him. He would as likely see you dead, and buried in secret, as make a telephone call. He has no regard at all for weakness, for human need, and cares only for his good name, which he maintains through utter ruthlessness. Do listen to me, Miss. In God’s truth, no other servant will help you for fear of him, but Alain Locque has taken everything from me that a man can take, and yet he holds me here. Hear my advice and be patient. When Master Emile returns, you must leave with him at once.”

“But I can’t stay with him,” Katherine pleaded. “I’m afraid of him. If you know what he is, then you understand that. You have to help me!”

Jens leaned forward to lay a hand on her shoulder, in an almost fatherly manner. “I had a daughter, once—she would have been about your age, had she lived,” he confided, dropping some of his formality. “I could not even help her, in this place. I wish to God that she had never seen this place! That the young master chose a woman like you indicates how different he is from his father, even now, even after all that has happened. Fear the man who kills the innocent with a pen more than the man who kills the loathsome with a gun. As for me, I have my orders—from both the son and from the father. I follow them.” He stood up again.

“But—”

He shook his head at her. “Courage, my dear. Courage.”

He shielded the candle with his hand and took his place as a sentinel outside the door. In disgust, Katherine rose and shut it.

Katherine waited until she heard Locque’s distant footsteps on the gravel outside, then ran to the dresser and riffled through it. She went through Locque’s desk, his closet, and even looked under his bed. Other than clothes and school notebooks she found nothing. Frustrated, she tested the floorboards to see if any were loose. None were.

On impulse, she sifted the deep piles of ashes in the fireplace, where stray paper could have been protected from the flames. There were papers here—newspaper clippings, fragments of correspondence, and the burned remains of a few photos. Katherine took them to the desk and used a corner of her dress to wipe the photos. They were of Locque. She marveled at the difference in him then, so blond, and thin but strappingly handsome, with an easy smile. For pity’s sake, make him eighteen years older and lighten his hair, and he could have been Mr. Elegant.

That had to be it—she _had_ seen Locque on the street that afternoon, when he had had a changed appearance. But try as she might, she could not reconcile the face of Mr. Elegant with the Locque that she now knew.

The last photo showed the young Locque again, this time embracing a woman. Katherine looked a long time at this one. The woman was also blond, with long tresses that curled down her back, and she very beautiful, and because she was only a few inches shorter than Locque, she must have been tall. She had the Hollywood good looks and the statuesque figure that Katherine always wanted, instead of being well proportioned but petite, and “interesting” in an angular way. Locque was holding the woman so that she faced him, with her cheek against his, and both were smiling for the camera. Behind him the sun was setting on the beach. Her left hand bore a ring on the fourth finger; she wondered if Locque’s did, but it was out of sight. They were a beautiful couple, all right.

When she turned over the photograph, she noticed the writing, “Maggie, at St. Tropez.”

She stuck the photographs with her magic stationery in the secret pocket of her dress.

#

The horses stood quietly, munching their hay or sleeping, and idly Bond reached out to rub the mane of one of them. The barn was warm after the chill of the night wind, and more peaceful than the atmosphere of the house. Bond had always loved horses, and had assumed that he would regard as a colleague any man who also loved them, but his encounter with Alain Locque left him unnerved and strangely angered. The horse nickered and stuck its head through the slats, and Bond rubbed its neck and spoke to it quietly.

Bond paused, feeling the hair rise on his neck. Very slowly, he turned. A man was standing behind him, a man in a reflective black jacket and wearing octagonal lenses. The man’s familiar lips were stretched slightly in that familiar not-smile. Bond froze, staring at him.

Those lips stretched themselves further, and Emile Leopold Locque took a step forward, pulling at his black-gloved hands so that Bond could see they too held no weapon. The eyes behind those spectacles glinted at him in a sort of greeting, but without humor, or humanity, or life.

Bond turned to face those fish-eyes squarely, and waited. The ghost of a smile on Locque’s face faded, to be replaced by that cold stare that Bond knew so well. Bond shook his head. “I guess that I should have made more certain of you.”

The assassin’s lips parted, and Bond heard for the first time Locque’s deep, cold voice. “You surely do not believe,” he taunted the agent, “that I would have blown up Kristatos’ warehouse?”

“Come to think of it, no,” Bond had to admit. “Not to strike at Columbo or me. It was a waste of raw opium. Locque would never have done that.”

“Or that a parrot repeated by coincidence an important clue for you aboard Melina Havelock’s ship?”

“No, I never believed that,” insisted Bond. “I knew that someone else had to have been on that ship to teach Max to repeat that phrase—and perhaps was hidden on board while she and I were there to hear it. But Miss Havelock believed it—and the point was, that clue was genuine, however it came about.” However, it could not have been Locque aboard the Triana on that day. Bond wondered how many of Locque’s men had been tracking him the whole time, in Corfu and in Brussels. Two of those men had paid for it with their lives—that driver in Brussels, and a double, the man who Bond had sent plummeting off the Albanian cliff—and the others had tried to kill Locque, for what reason he could not know, and paid as well.

“Or that I would catch a dove pin thrown by you through my car window and let you kick my car off a precipice, without me also aiming my PPK through that window _at_ _you_?” Locque seemed to savor these words in particular. “I always use a PPK, Bond—never a Lugar. It was a Lugar that Columbo took from the man you thought was me on Kristatos’ dock. And I always keep,” he added, smiling widely now,” an extra gun in my car.”

Bond glared his hatred. “You seem to know a lot of details despite having turned tail after running down Lisl!”

“You have your sources; I have mine,” Locque replied easily. “Just as we both still have our lives. We could keep it that way, you know.”

“That depends on how reasonable we want to be, Locque. All I want is the girl.”

Locque bit into a terrible smile. “Sorry, Mr. Bond—no deal. I like her.”

“She has nothing to do with this. Let her go, Locque!” Bond said.

“I will—eventually. I am not a killer of women. Dogs, perhaps—but not women.”

Bond wanted to send his fist into that sneer. “All right, Locque—you have the advantage now, but you cannot stay here forever, and wherever you go, I will go. I will trail you and I will catch you eventually, and I will free that girl.”

“I doubt very much,” sniggered Locque, “that you could ‘free’ her the way that I did last night, old man!”

“You son of a bitch!”

“Katherine welcomed me with open arms.”

“Bullshit!”

Locque shrugged. He turned, and melted back into the darkness. Bond took a step, but stopped when he heard that voice again: “You brought your Lotus to Brussels, I see. Pity that it needs repairs—I am quite capable with that. But weren’t you afraid that I would booby-trap it under the cover of night?”

Bond glanced around for the location of Locque’s voice. It seemed to be moving away from him, but he refused to be lured into the darkness, and stayed where he was. “You should have done that when you killed Luigi Ferrara. Two birds with one stone—it would have saved you a lot of trouble.”

“But _I_ did not kill Ferrara, Bond. No one can break past the defenses of your Lotus, not even me. Think very clearly now: Ferrara had to have opened the door to that car. Do you think that he would do that were I standing there? He opened it to someone that he knew and trusted.”

Bond paused, realizing.

“I had no reason, after all, to kill that bumbling fool. Ferrara was inept—he led us to you. Once exposed, Ferrara was useful to me, and I would rather have kept him alive to lead me to other agents, but he was no longer useful to Aris Kristatos, who knew that you were going to the practice rink that evening to visit Bibi Dahl. Kristatos sent his men after you, and lay in wait for Ferrara.”

“Come back into the light where I can see you,” ordered Bond.

Locque did, but via a different way, appearing now between the horse stalls, and closer than before. Bond whirled. Locque was smiling, and on his left breast Bond now saw the cloisonné dove pin. “Remember this? I still have it, for I never left mine with Ferrara,” said Locque. “The pin that you took from his body and tossed at who you thought was me is still at the bottom of that cliff in Albania. It was _Kristatos_ who killed Ferrara and left another pin like this for you to find! That son of a whore was triple crossing us, misleading you, and framing both me and Columbo at the same time! I found out about it just after Columbo’s men captured you.”

Bond exhaled sharply. “All right, I will admit that your story does make sense.”

“If you were to continue thinking along these lines, you would see that there is no longer any reason for us to be at each other’s throats.”

Bond shook his head. “Oh, there is!” He held up his own pin, the one that had been left on Columbo’s body. As he watched, he felt a sense of déjà vu as Locque’s expression changed into one of surprise. He was not an expressive man, so his look of confusion was more subtle than that of the other man in that car on the Albanian cliff, but it was confusion, and again it was not what Bond wanted or expected to see.

Locque shook his head. “You are obsessed.”

“Yes, I am!” Bond snarled.

“That’s a mistake. After all, I did not try very hard to kill you in Cortina. I had to act a part, for Kriegler’s sake, and because of Kristatos, who I now realize I should have sent down that ski jump beside you. Why Gogol yoked me to that paedophile I will never understand. I could have let my assistant kill you at Gonzalez’s villa, but I prevented him from doing so—did you know that? Claus or I could have shot you on that beach in Corfu, but did we? And my driver was acting on his own in Brussels. Sorry about that, but he’s dead, and you’re still alive. If anything, Mr. Bond, _you owe me your life_.”

Bond shook his head. “You’ve killed too many people around me. The next time we meet, you had better make sure that it’s _me_ you kill.”

“Oh, I will,” Locque told him. “But really, James Bond—you cannot ever be sure that it is me, or someone else, who is aiming at you, can you?”

He backed up, back into the darkness.

#

Katherine was lying on the bed, dozing fitfully along with a few stray cats that had pressed their warm pelts against her. When she heard voices outside the door, she sat up. “We’ll leave just before dawn,” she heard Locque say. “Have the horses ready then.”

“Master Emile—” Jens said softly. She strained to hear his voice. “The young lady has been crying.” There was a pause. Katherine was embarrassed; she did not think that anyone could hear her sobs. Sometimes they happened to her, involuntarily, but she hated to cry. It felt unnatural, and gave her headaches. “It breaks my heart to hear a woman cry. I fear that she is frightened.”

“She won’t die of fear,” Locque replied. “Nothing will happen to her, Jens.”

“I fear for you, too.”

“I will be all right.”

“Please listen, sir. Only three people I have loved in my life: Jeanette of course, and your dear mother, and you. And you are all that is left, Master Emile.”

“And I, you. Now get some sleep, Jens. You will need it.”

He entered the room. Katherine lay down again, turning away from him and retreating to the far side of the bed. She heard only silence, as he stood looking down at her for moment; then he sat on the bed and removed his shoes. “Your James Bond will not listen to reason.”

She did not reply.

“I should have known that he had clapped eyes on you in that library. Any pretty filly within a five-mile radius.” He lay down beside her. He riffled a cat’s back distractedly. “What is between you and me has nothing to do with him.”

Katherine said softly, “It does now. James won’t stop until he rescues me. Why fight over a woman? You could let me go tonight.”

“Don’t flatter yourself, baby. This fight is between men, not about you, and I’ll let you go in my own good time. But Bond stops his battle, right now,” Locque said coldly, “or he dies.”


	12. What You Take

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning: rape

A hand shook her. She moaned in protest—she hated being shaken awake, but the hand was strong and demanding. She opened her eyes to see that the room was visible in the pre-dawn light. The hand easily grasped both of her wrists and pulled her up to sit. “Wake up, beautiful,” Locque said, and looped a length of rope around them. “I’m sorry, lover, but I don’t trust you.” He secured her hands, wrapped the length around her waist and tied it again, and used the end to tie her ankles. She was too tired to resist and knew that it was futile, anyway. A silent form stood in the doorway and Katherine averted her eyes from Jens in humiliation. The Belgian pulled out a rag and looked pointedly at her. She closed her eyes in resignation, and after a moment, she felt him lift her without using the gag. He was very strong, and lifted her as if she weighed nothing. Following Jens and the candle, he carried her downstairs.

Jens had saddled two horses; Locque lifted her onto one of them and swung himself up behind her. Jens blew out the candle and mounted the other horse. For an older man he was lithe, and handled the horse masterfully. So did Locque, and they spurred the horses to a trot into the forest.

“Will you ever remember to use a flashlight, Jens, instead of scuffling about with an open flame?” Locque teased suddenly, and his voice was so different, so resonant, when he spoke to the servant. “It’s not safe in that firetrap.”

“I suppose it is because of your mother that I light a candle on Friday and Saturday nights. It could be that I prefer the gentle glow to a harsher light. Perhaps, too, it makes her seem near.”

“I always forget what day it is.” Locque shook his head. “Lighting a candle is the extent of her observance, as I remember.”

“Nevertheless, it will always be a pleasant memory, Master Emile.”

Locque chuckled. “You’re not giving me a complete answer, Jens.”

They traveled further without speaking, and Locque opened his jacket to draw Katherine into it, holding the reins with his other hand. She laid her cheek against his chest and dozed again, lulled by the rhythmic gait of the animal and by the warmth from her captor’s skin through the cotton. After some time she felt the horse pull up short. She opened her eyes to see Locque throw the reins to Jens; then he untied her hands and guided them to the saddle horn. Locque dismounted expertly, and reached his arms up for her; she put her hands on his shoulders, and he lowered her to the ground carefully, for her feet were still bound.

“Thank you, Jens,” he said. “Goodbye.”

The pain in the servant’s face was visible in the morning light. “Thank you,” Katherine also said to him. “I’ll always remember your kind words, Jens.” That made Locque glance from him to her.

“What is there left for me to do but to pray for you, Master Emile?” the old man asked helplessly. He nodded to Katherine. “And for you, my lady. God bless you, Miss.” Leading the horse that Locque had ridden, he rode back in the way that they had come.

Locque stooped to untie her feet but she brushed off his hands and did it herself. When she straightened, he put a commanding hand on her arm and led her to the clearing. There, they trudged up the gravel path to a lavish resort. It looked vacant, apparently closed for the season. It appeared to be in the same style as the carriage house, and the main building; she wondered if it belonged to his family.

“We’ll lay low here for a while,” Locque told her. He guided her to a side French door, and rapped on it.

Andre opened the door, and stepped back to reveal a sumptuous hotel suite. Katherine propelled herself inside on her mud-caked heels and, spying the carafe of coffee next to the cups on the sideboard, made a display of stumbling toward it with her arms out, moaning and gasping facetiously, like a parched desert traveler toward a mirage. Locque swung his long legs inside and kicked the door shut, and both men watched as she poured herself a cup, added cream, and then retreated to a corner, where she sat down on her haunches to drink it. Out of habit Locque went up to her and started to bend down to seize her by the arm to make her sit in a chair, but she whirled and hissed at him like a cat. Locque straightened up again, regarding her in amusement, and Andre smiled as she drank.

Andre noted her gulping the contents of the cup. “Looks like a gypsy you found. I’ll throw her into the gutter!”

Locque ran a hand over his stubbled chin. “You would not believe what a little savage this one reverted to being, running naked through the woods, building fires and catching fish with her bare hands, seducing the servants, and riding a horse bareback.”

As he’d hoped, his words provoked her; she glared at him. He dismissed Andre and left the room to shave. After finishing her coffee, Katherine went to shower. The spa-like shower was huge, and while she was shampooing her hair, Locque casually stepped in beside her, blocking her exit. She quailed at his presence, but he allowed her to finish her hair and to leave the stall before he was done.

Avoiding the bed, she went to the sun room and climbed into the Jacuzzi. Locque’s smile flashed when he saw her there, and he doffed the robe that he had found and climbed in as well. He learned back in the tub and laced his fingers behind his head. Without his glasses, his eyes appeared larger and more startling, and his gaze was as palpable as a hand upon her flesh. Timidly, she approached, and reached out to touch his wet hair. He allowed it, so she slowly changed his part from the center, trying to recreate the side comb-over that Mr. Elegant had sported. He and that man looked alike, and yet…

His hand erupted from the water to seize hers. “Level with me,” he demanded, his eyes now very dark. She jumped, and stared uncomprehendingly at him. “You are in no hurry to be found, are you?” He was squeezing her hand again, but she clenched her jaw and said nothing. “You were a missing person long before I found you. You have been missing from the United States for years.”

“I am not a missing person. In my country, any adult has a right to run away and not be found.”

“An adult does not have a right to steal, at least not someone who does not run a corporation.” He let go of her hand. “How much did you take?”

She sighed. “Forty thousand dollars.”*

Locque whistled—which seemed unlike him.

“It’s really mine,” she insisted. “My father owed me that money.”

He stretched lazily. “It is yours only if you can get away with it. He may have owed it to you, but that does not make any difference. Inheritance, contracts, government—anything can be violated, and will be, especially when it involves a woman. Nothing is yours but what you _take_. Besides, your father is a thief, no? So, you are ‘owed’ a slice of his criminal empire?” He smiled at her, and she did not answer. “I disinherited myself, deliberately. That was the most honest thing to do. My father is a cold-hearted bastard—even worse than I am—but he’s no criminal.”

“Then you _are_ worse than he is,” Katherine interjected, “for being a criminal.”

“No, sweetie. I’m much nicer than he is. And even if that were true, what are you?” He sounded amused. “You’re a criminal, too.”

She let out her breath in a huff, angered by his expression. “It’s different. I used that money to—”

He threw back his head and laughed. “It’s always ‘different’ when it’s you! Rob from the rich to give to the poor—it’s still a crime.” He smiled broadly at her while she idly sloshed the water. “Be honest, poet. You did not really steal that money for your noble reasons, even though you were organized and practical about it, and put it to better use than most people would. You stole because it gave you a charge—a thrill, a sense of power and control, revenge—and that is no different from me. You—” and he pointed at her, “—whether you know it or not, are a risk-taker. It’s no mystery!”

She felt the tears sting her eyes.

He shook his head slowly, still smiling. “Well, well. But how marvelous of you!” She turned away from him. “Yes, it is different though, because you’re a woman. In order to escape your situation, you had to steal. A man can move freely in this world without money, but not a woman. Money is a weapon, no less than a gun—and a woman without either is completely vulnerable to any rapist or killer.” Now he really was laughing at her. He reached out to make her face him again.

He had used the word _marvelous_ , Katherine realized. “So that is why you took me,” she mused to change the subject. “Revenge. To strike at James.”

Locque suddenly frowned. “I had no idea of your association with Bond.”

“He’s a _very_ good friend,” she gloated.

His finger brandished itself an inch from her nose. “Watch your mouth. I can spot a lie, I warn you. And James Bond is everyone’s friend. He is a boy scout,” Locque concluded in contempt, “except in one respect.” He pulled her onto his lap and smoothed back a curl. “I took you because I wanted you. You, not anyone else. I was looking for weeks before I found the woman I wanted.”

Katherine recoiled at being so close to him again, and he clamped a hand on the back of her neck to hold her there. “You—might have asked me,” she managed.

His smile was dazzling, and terrible. “I did ask you. _Remember?_ ” He pulled her face even closer to his, those eyes boring into hers. “And come to think of it, you had just committed another crime, you little exhibitionist.”

There was no arguing with him. The tears that she had been trying to blink away slid down her cheeks. She was painfully aware of her nakedness, and of his. Her hands pushed against his chest before she could stop them. “If you fight me, there’ll be trouble,” he told her in a gravelly voice, and his large hands tightened painfully on her arms.

She put her hands over her face instead. He loosened his grip and slid his arms around her waist. “Hey, relax,” he whispered into her ear. “Let it happen and it will be nice, like last time. You enjoyed that.”

“I don’t want to, now.”

He nibbled her ear, ignoring her. She kept her hands over her eyes, and after a slight tug, Locque left them there. He nuzzled her neck, and one hand kneaded the muscles at the base of her skull. She refused to be lulled. “I’m hungry,” she improvised.

He paused, then sat back, his lips twisted in amusement. “All right. I am, too.” He shoved her away and climbed out of the tub. Katherine slapped some water on her face and waited until he had toweled off and left the room before she climbed out.

He was telephoning when she slunk into the bedroom. Katherine grabbed her dress and threw it around her. “Get that off and get into bed,” Locque instructed. “We have some time…and when our food arrives, we’ll eat it there.”

She let out her breath in utter frustration. He snapped his fingers in the direction of the bed with his eyes full of warning, so she quickly complied. “I’ve even ordered champagne,” he told her pleasantly. She drew the sheet up to her chin and said nothing. Slowly he approached her, loosening the belt of his robe. “I’ve already told you: nothing belongs to you but what you take. You must learn to take what you want from the choices that you have.” Again she averted her eyes from his naked body, which made him chuckle. He sat on the bed beside her and touched her face. “But first, you have to learn what it is that you want!”

“So, I’ll take my own freedom,” she managed.

He smiled at her as if she were a newly discovered specimen. “You can try. But even if you succeed in getting away from me— _and you won’t_ —you’ll just become prey for someone else. It’s only a matter of time. And perhaps the monster will beat you, or at least be ugly, smelly, and ungentle. I’m not so bad.” He threw off the sheet. “You may as well make up your mind to get what you want from me.”

The wall of his chest seemed enormous. She was trying not to resist, but she could not help shrinking from him. “Like what?”

“Your own pleasure,” he replied.

#

Q was not going to be happy with Bond. The last incarnation of the Lotus had exploded outside of Hector Gonzalez’s compound, just after Melina Havelock had killed Gonzalez for the murder of her parents. Bond sat on his hotel bed and considered putting the wheel back on the current Lotus himself, but Q was soon to find out the truth when Bond phoned in an update to his office. Irritably, he rang M’s office, hoping that M was finally back from leave, but Moneypenny told him that she would bring Tanner to the phone again. “Tanner, Tanner, Tanner,” Bond teased her despite his mood, “what are you two—lovers?”

“You know there’s only one man for me, James.” Her cool humor was like a handrail on a swaying train car.

“What did you do to M that he’s still away?”

“Oh, no more than the usual insubordination.”

There was a silence, then the sound of the line being picked up. “Emile Leopold Locque is alive,” Tanner said over the phone without preamble.

Bond grunted, “I know, sir. I have seen him—I even spoke with him.”

“I guessed as much. Well, the strange thing is, Bond, he _quit_. From what we have managed to piece together, in the hours before you and Columbo stormed his warehouse in Albania, he and Kristatos had a terrific row, and Locque threatened to kill Kristatos. Kristatos apparently did not take it seriously. Locque then pistol-whipped him two or three times, called him a few colorful epitaphs in front of his man Apostis, and walked off the job. By the time that you were in Albania, Locque was in Cypress. He was on his way to Brussels when he abruptly disappeared for a few weeks, and as you know, Kristatos went to his ship to resume the search for the ATAC, and also, presumably, to hide his bruised cheek from his minions.”

“Sir,” Bond put in, “since this morning I have been operating under the assumption that Kristatos knowingly employed two men, with similar appearances. Now I wonder if even Aris Kristatos was also Locque’s dupe in this. As it turns out, Locque had his own staff—one of those men was on the Triana while Kristatos invaded it. He might have also employed a double the entire time, bringing that man in when he would only be seen from a distance, and in the dark, by Kristatos’ men and by us, at that warehouse.”

“Clever,” said Tanner. “Although you were sure that it was Locque dangling from the cliff, but of course the sun was only beginning to rise and things were chaotic. At any rate, we have a positive identification from an unimpeachable source. Locque definitely left Corfu and hid out for a few weeks, and did not contact even his closest associates, nor return urgent messages from Gogol, who became enraged. Something spooked Locque, it would seem.”

“I doubt it,” Bond said grimly. “At any rate, I’ll get him this time.”

“I would remind you of your orders, Bond. We want to learn Locque’s present relationship with Gogol. Take him alive.”

“I’ll do my best, sir.” His teeth were clenched.

“That’s not good enough. If you cannot get him alive, you must back off. That takes priority—rescuing Miss March comes second. You will carry out your _orders_ , 007!”

Bond leaned his head back against the headboard of his bed. “Yes, sir.”

#

Whatever Katherine was expecting, Locque had surprised her again. She had assumed that his bad cop menace after the good cop act would lead to forcible penetration at last, but still he held off. Instead, he lay beside her in the bed, stroking her and asking her about herself. She never imagined that such a usually taciturn man could talk so much. He appeared to be in an insufferably good mood, and perfectly confident in his ability to make her succumb, once again, to his tongue and his fingers. She answered in near-catatonic monosyllables, refusing to be humored.

He persisted, gazing at her with his intense eyes. “If I had not gotten to you first, you know that your James Bond would have oiled his way in. You’re making a big mistake, thinking that he doesn’t want payment for ‘rescuing’ you. It’s a wonder that Bond’s name is not synonymous with gonorrhea. Love is a game to him.”

“Love is a game to _you_. At least he would have bought me dinner, first.”

Locque smiled at her, encouraged by the joke, however lame, for it was her first sentence in a while. “Or else it would have been your doddering Ben-twat from the library.” She made a sound that he was sure was an involuntary laugh turned into a gurgle. “I saw the way that he was looking at you. He seemed to be a complete poof, but he kept bending toward the lower shelves whenever you stood beside him in that skirt.”

“That’s utterly disgusting!”

“I sat in the reading room for the better part of an hour waiting to get you alone, you know.”

“That must have been very boring for you. Perhaps you should have checked out a _book_.”

He squeezed her thigh, pleased. She became more interesting when her ire was raised. Once he got a rise out of her, she was more likely to submit—she was like that. “I’d rather borrow you.” There was a knock at the door. Locque sat back. “You’re very beautiful.”

“‘Only the Marvelous is beautiful,’” she sneered, quoting André Breton.

He strode to the door completely naked and, to her shock, opened it like that. She dived beneath the covers under the gaze of the perplexed young man pushing the cart. Locque pulled it inside the door and, in lieu of coins, threw some courtesy cards at the man so that they fluttered about him, then slammed the door shut again. It was such a comical scene that Katherine could not help her mouth twisting into a smile as Locque pushed the cart toward her. Besides, food meant delaying the inevitable.

Locque, however, had other ideas. He yanked the covers off her again and spooned a bit of the sauced shallots from the Entrecote Bordelaise into her belly button. “Hey!” Katherine exclaimed as he bent over her to lap them up, “what if that had been scalding?”

The steaks themselves were still sizzling on their plates, so she leaned forward eagerly, but Locque planted a hand on her naked breast and forced her back to the bed. He leaned over her. “Kiss me first.”

“No.”

“You have a choice: kiss me or suck my cock, or you don’t eat.”

She cast about wildly for an escape. “You’re sweeping me off my feet!”

“Tick, tock, tick, tock.” He leaned forward, flicking his tongue at her.

“Then I’ll drink, instead,” Katherine replied evenly. Locque’s smile faded. “Get me drunk, and I _might_ suck your cock. Or I might just kiss you. But if I don’t eat, I won’t do either, and just get plastered.”

She was not exactly learning the game, and it was a losing bargain; he would break her soon enough by withholding food, and certainly by her getting plastered. However, he decided to let her win, since her mood was lightening. He poured her a glass of champagne. When she sipped it, he splashed a little from the bottle into her belly button as well. “Wait a minute—I thought there was no staff,” she said when he pressed his lips to her stomach.

“There is no _hotel_ staff. My men—or at least what’s left of them—have arrived. And that’s why,” and Locque lifted his head, and then his eyebrows, “you won’t find any steak knives.” Katherine looked again at the cart; there were also no forks, she noted. “The telephone goes right to the front desk, manned by Andre, and my bellhop plus a new guy are covering the doors. So, don’t get any bright ideas about asking anyone for help. Those beasts would gladly take my place, all at one time.” Locque casually picked up both steaks and, laying them on his chest, leaned back. “Let’s see how well Andre cooks. Come here, little savage. Take your pick.”

Knowing that the meat was hot against his skin, she drew out her choice. He did not seem uncomfortable, however. She chose a steak and ate it with her fingers. There were spoons for the sauce, and the potatoes. She accepted another glass of champagne; it gave her time to think. Locque ate too, almost mechanically, yet delicately like a cat, with his eyes glued to her; he never seemed to show hunger or thirst, she realized. He did not react to cold, or heat, or let on that he was uncomfortable, ever. He did not even show a great deal of anger when he was threatening her, although that voice and those eyes of his could turn her belly to ice, but he was so different now that she wondered if his blankness was a front. People had sometimes seen her, too, as emotionally empty because of her shyness.

He finished eating before she did, and lay regarding her impassively. He was really quite beautiful, she decided, lanky but not too thin, nor repulsively muscled, which she had always hated. He had put those spectacles back on; perhaps he truly needed them. She wiped her fingers, playing for time. “You have a choice to make now,” he gloated. No doubt, he was expecting her to kiss him and had a trick up his sleeve, perhaps grabbing her and rolling her beneath him for a painful attack at last. She considered the alternative. It might not be so bad, after all; if she got him off, maybe he would finally leave her alone.

#

Tanner’s office had given Bond the name of Qasim Bayoumi, a businessman with alleged ties to the Brussels underworld, as his next contact. Bond was ushered into the foyer by the young servant. “Mr. Bond, your name is legendary to me,” the Egyptian said as he extended his hand. Bond took it, knowing that Bayoumi meant only the name _James_ _Bond_ , which had belonged to two other agents before him. “I can guess as to your purpose here. Miss Katherine March was a guest of mine last night. A very charming young lady.” He offered Bond a Bloody Mary, which the agent accepted. Qasim took one too and led Bond to the balcony to watch the golfers far below.

“What was her condition?” Bond asked in dread.

“Frightened, angry, but plucky. No bruises, Mr. Bond—put aside any fears of that. She’s a resourceful girl, and reticent, which will make it easier for her. I would not call Emile Locque sadistic, but he does not tolerate open opposition and would punish her for it. He does, however, appreciate wit.”

“What he means is to punish me. Locque has started a personal fight and is using her against me.”

Qasim, about to drink, put down his glass. “I don’t think that’s true, Mr. Bond,” he said, sounding genuinely surprised. “Locque keeps his work separate from his agenda with women, and always has. He has very definite ideas about men, women, who is who, and what is what. He considers a woman who appeals to him to be his right, as a need like food and drink, not to be used as weapons in men’s business. I believe that he took her independently of this conflict with you because he saw her and preferred her, as he has taken other women despite whatever was going on in his work.”

Bond’s eyes narrowed, but he did not press his point. “And would you say that she resembles those other women that he has taken?”

Qasim smiled in a way that Bond did not like. “Well… She is a strange one, even for him. But I don’t question his taste at all. Locque goes by scent. Women don’t realize how important their scent is to a man. He is what they call a ‘super-smeller’—in fact, he worked for a while in the perfume industry, which made his father livid. Scent is not confined to a certain body type, and over the years I have noticed him varying his tastes, picking more ordinary women, which I attribute, if you follow me, to a certain maturity on his part.

“Plus, she certainly has the comportment, and she’s pretty enough. She is not exactly innocent, but she has a certain sweetness—unlike these modern creatures from the planet Aerobics,” he added. “And she is intelligent, witty. Verbally, she held her own with him. All the men, certainly, enjoyed her company.”

“One might wonder,” Bond countered, “how much she enjoyed theirs—or is enjoying his.”

“Ah.” Qasim nodded. “Locque has an Achilles heel where women are concerned, and has as long as I have known him. Oh, many men do, but his is unique. I don’t know how much longer his game can last, choosing oddball women and trying to both shock and seduce them, like Baudelaire shocking the bourgeoisie with his poetry, only to become celebrated later as a man of letters—Locque squeezes that drama into the space of a few months before he sends them off with a bank account and a spank. Sooner or later, he is going to grab a true oddball who cannot remain shocked, who refuses to hate him and may actually love him despite what he is—for then, who knows, he may love her back, and he will finally have to stop taking his revenge on substitutes for Maggie Evans, and admit that his search is over.”

“Maggie Evans?” Bond asked.

“A young British woman, very beautiful, with whom Locque had an affair when he was also quite young, at twenty, twenty-one years of age or so. She escaped her poor surroundings in Liverpool to make her way to Brussels on the backs of various wealthy suitors. Locque was completely smitten with her, and there was some talk of marriage, but she owed quite a lot of money to some sharks, and she left him to be circled by them while she ran off with another, richer, man. Locque barely escaped with his life, and besides being rendered destitute—for his father had disowned him—he spent a few months in hospital. And that is when I first met him.” Qasim shook his head. “Strange to think of Locque young and naïve once, but he was—in fact, he was quite the idealist, and I’m afraid that they, once embittered, can make truly hardened criminals. He was also quite the looker, too. He had so much promise, once, although he rather directionless as a youth, to his father’s great annoyance, but everything annoyed Alain Locque.”

Bond asked over his drink, “And this Maggie Evans? What was her origin?”

“Who knows if that was her real name, even back then. She had so many names. Who knows if she was from Liverpool, too. She is probably someone’s wealthy wife by now—or more likely, someone’s wealthy widow.” Qasim smiled.

Bond shook his head. “I saw Emile Leopold Locque kill a woman in cold blood. It was in Corfu, on the beach, not more than two months ago. She was the Countess Lisl von Schraaf, and Locque ran her down with a dune buggy while he was trying to capture me. There was no reason for him to do it other than to trick me into thinking that her lover was jealous of me, when in fact she had been sent by him to find out who I was. It happened right before my eyes, and there is no mistake.”

Qasim blinked in surprise. “That does not sound like the Emile Locque that I know! To my knowledge, he considers the killing of civilians, as it were, to be an act of weakness—disorder. He enjoys the job, but killing _is_ a job with him, and he does it with precision, not with buckshot. He kills powerful men but not nobodies, not women, and not children or animals. In fact, he has quite a soft spot for animals, though not particularly for children. A countess. Hm.” Qasim mused, stroking his chin. “And running her down, yet. No, it does not seem to fit with what I know, unless she was armed, or had threatened him in some way, but even then...” The Egyptian seemed at a loss. “Some hired guns are truly evil, sick bastards who will kill anything and anyone, but they become trigger-happy and earn a bad reputation very quickly in this business, and become sloppy and unmanageable. Very often sociopaths like that stop finding jobs and are eliminated by organized killers like Locque. No one wants them around.”

Bond pounced. “Perhaps your assessment of Emile Leopold Locque is in error?”

“I wonder if you can accept what I’m about to tell you, Mr. Bond: despite the job that they do, many hit men _are_ just men. They are not monsters; they have feelings. Some even have hearts. Some of them have wives and families, though not many—I’m afraid that most of them do live alone, and do not live to an old age, though the ones that do find a niche of power and respectability, and cloak their rise.” He presented himself full-on at Bond’s gaze and smiled as if to say, _Believe it_. “However, most of them did not grow up pulling the wings off butterflies or beating up their classmates.

“The Emile Leopold Locque that I know is the Locque who once ordered his colleagues to beat a man within an inch of his life because that man had tortured his own mistress’s pet dog.” Lines deepened in the man’s face at the memory. “It did not matter that she was not Locque’s woman—it mattered that she was helpless and that there had been no reason for this man to harm the animal, other than pure sadism. The girl wept silent, bitter tears and Locque became incensed—perhaps more at the death of the animal than at her pain—but he sprang into action. The whole thing was very ugly and Locque took care of it without any prodding because he was morally outraged. It raised his standing considerably among us. Criminals have a code, after all, in prison—it’s the same on the outside. And despite how random his actions appear to you, Mr. Bond, for _they are meant to appear random_ , Locque has rules. It was Kristatos who did not—and now I know what a truly sick man was Aris Kristatos, and how much Locque hated him, too.”

“You say all of this,” Bond interjected angrily, “while Locque, who I insist _has_ killed a woman in cold blood, is holding another innocent woman prisoner at this very moment, and is doing God knows what to her!”

Qasim nodded, putting up a hand. “I can imagine what he is doing to her, Mr. Bond! And I will not say that it is not rape, for it is not with her consent, and he has to be the dominant one, and will be. But—again, it is not so simple. Rape is about power and control, yes, and often done out of hatred. Yet he does not hate Woman, womanhood itself, as many men in this business do.

“The women I have met who were victims of Locque emerged more confused by the experience than anything else. None of them reported having experienced pain unless they defied him, though Locque enjoys frightening a woman to keep her in line. He likes to find out what their limits are. A couple of his targets even said that if Locque had been in a different line of work, they would have preferred to stay with him. I remember that one of the girls told me, ‘Even though he does not say much, he asked my opinion more than my husband ever did.’” Qasim laughed, but Bond merely tightened his lips. “Now, that is a comment on the sorry state of bourgeois marriage truly worthy of Arthur Rimbaud! Locque is not a beast. He does not just throw himself on top of a woman, as good soldiers, or as good horse breeders, do.”

For a few moments, they stood drinking and looking out over the golf course. “There is the temptation,” Qasim started again, and Bond turned to him, “in the case of a man who consciously chooses a life of crime—and I say that because Locque is a man who could have made other choices—to look for this cause or that cause, a temptation that I should resist, but Locque’s background is so different from that of any other hired gun that I have known that I cannot help but wonder what happened to him—for after all, alone among all of the poets Arthur Rimbaud made a similar choice. Why did either of them make that choice? And I know only of two traumatic experiences that could have been a tipping point: the betrayal of Maggie, and Locque watching his mother die. You have had the pleasure of meeting Alain Locque, I take it?”

“Quite,” said Bond.

“Your face says it all, Mr. Bond. Well, Locque was seventeen at the time, and his mother Cosima was dying of cancer—a very painful death, regrettably, and Alain was enjoying his mistress the whole time. Now, Mr. Bond, you and I are men of the world, and husbands reserve the right to step out on their wives—adultery is an institution on the Continent—but to be so indiscreet and unfeeling while the poor lady is dying? A gentleman pulls his family around him at such a time, and the mistress retires from public life and lights a candle in a church for the man’s wife, and everyone shows the proper respect, but not Alain Locque! His mistress left him in disgust eventually, so he took whores into the house during Cosima’s illness—it caused a minor scandal in Belgian society. But to say that there is any straight line from Locque then to Locque now…” Qasim shrugged. “Edgar Allan Poe, after all, went through much the same experience with his step-mother, and while it haunted him to the end of his days, Poe remained a shy and gentle man…and an alcoholic, which Locque decidedly is not.”

Bond grimaced. “I do not wish to understand Emile Locque, Mr. Bayoumi. I wish to find him. Will you help me?”

“Ah.” Qasim turned back to the balcony railing and shook his head. “If Locque does not want to be found, you will never locate him, Mr. Bond.”

“Why is that, sir?”

“Because Locque hides in plain sight. He is very deliberate and makes few missteps—though he will _disguise_ his movements as such—and he changes his appearance. It is astonishing how he can look completely different when he has such a distinctive face. In fact, he bragged to me that he kept close tabs on you in Brussels, that you walked right by him and did not see him.” Qasim lifted his drink. “But most importantly, if he sees no true necessity to kill, he does not. He holds back. That restraint and, frankly, that courage separates him from the others; rather, he manipulates the circumstances to achieve his goals. Remember, Locque’s assistant could have shot you dead at Gonzalez’s villa, but Locque prevented it. Locque also did not kill you in Corfu. You are alive today largely due to him!”

Bond tensed. “We’ll see about that. At any rate, it is Miss March that I really want to find.”

Qasim turned to him again. “There is something that struck me, Mr. Bond, when both Katherine—Miss March—and Locque were here. Last night was the first time in a long time that I actually heard Locque laugh. _She_ made him laugh, despite being quite frightened of him, and I daresay she even endeared herself as much to him as to everyone else. She has something—your Katherine March is definitely unique.

“So for her sake, I may have another clue for you, Mr. James Bond: it has been rumored that the marriage of Alain and Cosima Locque was so unhappy due in part to Alain Locque’s disgust at discovering that his wife had concealed her Jewish ethnicity until after the wedding. According to gossip, throughout their marriage that bigot would humiliate Cosima in little ways, in the presence of their son and in front of the staff, by refusing to let her dine at the same table with him, making her wear a yellow star on her clothes, forcing her to walk barefoot in the house, etc. Who knows how true the stories are. She was certainly not observant according to her friends. However, her mother and grandmother were reportedly Ashenazic Jews.”

“If that is true, then that would make Locque _Yhudi_ , eligible for citizenship in Israel!” Bond observed.

Qasim raised his eyebrows at the agent. “Which has no extradition treaty with Belgium or with Great Britain, nor indeed with any nation, as the Knesset has passed a law against it.”

“But surely, sir!” Bond exclaimed. “Most European nations, and South American ones as well, do not extradite their citizens. That does not prevent Interpol from doing its work, so surely the Israeli police would not wink at Locque making such a claim. Nor would the Mossad.”

“But if he were to make it with a false identity, and with a changed appearance? Look at Locque’s own psychiatrist in Namar Prison—a South American wanted for the murder of a young girl—that man went unpunished, or almost, until he had Locque as a patient. And especially if Locque is working as an undercover mercenary for my own government?” Qasim raised his eyebrows at a surprised Bond.

Bond replied, “Egypt and Israel have a peace treaty.”

“A peace treaty that does not sit well with many Egyptian citizens. A peace treaty that is loathed by the groups that opposed the government of Anwar Sadat and who carried out his assassination last year! Those groups have infiltrated my government.”

Bond pondered this while Qasim drained his glass. Bond, his eyes on Qasim, continued to subtly cover his straw and release the liquid over the railing and into the garden below. It was an old trick; sometimes he also let the alcohol run down the side of the glass the way that charlatans in India convinced the faithful that a statue of Parvati was weeping. Small constant amounts imitated a man consuming his drink. For all he knew, Qasim Bayoumi was watching this farce over a glass of plain tomato juice—and Qasim knew that Bond had guessed. _What a waste of raw opium_ , Bond thought sarcastically.

#

Katherine reached for the champagne bottle, and tilted it over her mouth. “You’ve earned it,” Locque teased her, purring, the way he always did when he got what he wanted.

“And I’m good at it,” she retorted, stung by his smugness.

There was something about him that always seem coiled as if to spring, even when he reposed on his back as he was doing now. “You are indeed, baby!”

“Perhaps the callow American even enjoys it.”

He took the bottle from her and put it to his own lips—his first taste of the champagne, she realized. He had let her drink much of it without taking any himself, and she had not noticed. She would be more on guard next time. “I never thought of you as callow, but you are my first American. Well,” he said, and sat up. He took her by the arms. “Lie back. It’s your turn now.”

Katherine made a sound in her throat and pulled against his hands, so he dragged her to the pillows. “You don’t seem to get it, woman. We’re done only when _I_ say that we’re done. You have a quota of at least one orgasm a day.” He held her down. “You need to learn to do what I say, when I say.”

“Leave me alone,” she pleaded.

“I told you to relax. Lie back. Let me take care of you.” His lips twisted upward. “I can make you feel really good, like last time.”

“I don’t like you!” she said as he lifted her leg.

He placed her foot on his chest and stroked it. “They never do—at first. But I like _you_.” He ran his tongue along her ankle. “I love the way you smell, and honey, that’s something I know about. I love licking your tight little pussy, and despite what you say, sooner or later you’re going to let me fuck it. I’ll be gentle.” He pulled back and slipped her big toe into his mouth as she watched. She tried to keep her breath even but the panic welled up in her. He nibbled her toes, then lowered her foot and leaned forward. “And I love your little mewling cries when you come! So feminine.”

She tried to pull away, but he held on to her arms, smiling wickedly down at her. “But this time, don’t try to conceal it! I’m going to know anyway, from the way you vibrate.”

“There won’t be another time!”

He shook with silent laughter, and held on to her as she struggled. He slipped a knee over her waist before she could twist away from him, and trapped her body between his thighs. “You’re only hurting yourself.”

She gave up, and lay looking away from him.

“You have been neglected,” he said then, running a hand through her hair. His voice had changed a little, become more soft and resonant. “You’re too thin and pale—perhaps anemic—but we’ll fix that, little savage. You have pretty hair, but it’s like a hedge, all one length. Maybe a trim, hmm? Some sunshine, some rest. A little pampering. And you and I can do all the things that your absent-minded vegetarian would not do with you.”

“He wasn’t a vegetarian—he just didn’t eat red meat. And he did do things with me.”

“He apparently was not very good at it!” Locque concluded. He parodied her voice: “‘What are you doing? What are you doing?’ It’s like you never had oral sex before—and I had to tell you not to hold your breath. Don’t you know that that chokes the sensation? At your age! Have you been kept in a box all your life?”

She was getting sick of him laughing at her. “I’m tired.”

“Then you should not have fought me all morning. Close your eyes and rest, and let me finish with you.”

She gave in. She closed her eyes but could not keep them closed, so she watched him until, at last, her eyes unfocused. He was gentle, different, murmuring in her ear, finding with his lips the sensitive areas at her nape, her abdomen, and along her thighs. It was a game to him but she was forced to admit that when he wanted to be he was a kind and accomplished lover, changing rhythm to her nonverbal cues, attentive, not clumsy or oblivious. She closed her eyes and squeezed out a tear. At length he gave her his hands to pull on, encouraging her, sending her.

“That was strong!” he whispered appreciatively as her thigh lay shuddering against his cheek. This second time banished his fears about her. She was nervous, but ardent. He wondered if, when she finally let him inside her, she would come on his cock. Some women did. Some women loved being balled as much as they loved being cuddled, or gone down on, or complimented. She showed every indication of being starved for affection and her responses had atrophied somewhat, but she blossomed once he found a way to make her feel safe.

“I hate you,” she told him, bruised by the fact that she had, once again, enjoyed it and wanted it, greedily, her desire uncurling obscenely before him, seduced not only by his prowess but by a kind of diabolical charity.

He shrugged. “I know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *I stole this from Psycho.


	13. Poetry

He was dreaming of Lisl. Lisl, running from the dune buggy as it bore down on her. Lisl, running clumsily over the sand, then turning to look in helpless terror as he aimed for her, yet it was not Lisl’s face but Katherine’s who opened her mouth just before his hood struck her, who opened her mouth but did not scream, because she could never think of it in time. It was Katherine who was flipping over the hood, her face mashed against the cracked windshield. He felt his foot stomp on the footboard, once, twice, and then he awoke.

His hands closed on the small form nestled beside him, and then his mind was awake, sharp.

He nudged her. “Get up.” Katherine groaned sleepily. “I can’t get you into bed,” Locque grumbled, “and then I cannot get you out of it.” When she did not move, he shook her, roughly. “ _Malaise-ia_ ,” Locque sneered. “Get up.”

“It’s dark!”

“Of course it’s dark. We’re going back to my apartment.”

She stumbled while yanking on her dress, her head spinning because she had stood up too quickly. The was an audible rip along an underarm seam but she was past caring.

In the back of another generic sedan, she shivered and decided to lean into him. He took off his jacket and drew it around her, and held her close against his chest. “Poor baby,” he said into her hair. “We’ll be home soon, and in our own bed.”

She huffed a sigh that was not contentment.

He slid a hand to her hip, and buried his face against her neck. Despite herself she struggled, seeing the smirks on the faces of his minions, the man sitting next to Andre in the front, and the man on the other side of her in the back seat. He gave her a vicious pinch on her thigh. “Listen to me. Stick your arms into my coat, zip it up, and _keep it closed_ ,” he hissed darkly into her ear. “I’m not telling you this again: do as I say, when I say. Keep your mouth shut, and when you hit the ground, stay there.” He pulled back to look at her and she gawked back, suddenly alert. _Got it?_ he mouthed, and she nodded. She zipped up his huge, heavy jacket. It was hot and close, and so heavy that she felt like she was wearing a tank.

The car came to a stop in an underground garage, and Andre came round to open Locque’s door. She saw the glance that passed between him and Locque. With his hand on her arm, Locque guided her out and walked her across the concrete. She noted with alarm that the other two men were not following Locque; they strode to overtake him. Locque positioned his back to a pillar and rumbled, “Go limp.”

She did not obey immediately, but he cracked her smartly across her face and it made her knees buckle. It shocked her more than it hurt, but the sound of his hand against her cheek seemed deafening against the bare cement. She sat on the pavement, rubbing her cheek. Then she saw one of the men pull out his gun and aim it at Andre.

Locque had moved to pull her in front of him, but the other henchman got to her first and aimed his muzzle at Katherine’s head. “You don’t save it all for yourself, do you Locque?” he taunted, and hooked his arm around Katherine’s neck. He dragged her to her feet, his gun pointed to her temple. Locque had his gun trained on their direction, but the man held Katherine’s head in front of his and spoke from behind her neck. Andre had his gun out too, trained on the other henchman.

“What’s Gogol paying you?” Locque asked. “I’ll double it.”

“No one is paying us and that’s the problem. Her father’s worth millions!” said the man holding Katherine. “You’ve wasted time with her. If you can’t hack it, I’ll take over.”

Locque warned, “You’ll take nothing.”

“I’m taking her. One move and she’s dead.” He started to back away, pulling her with him.

Locque raised his gun and pointed it at Katherine’s chest. “She’s dead anyway.”

Katherine was struck in the breastbone with tremendous force. Both she and the henchmen were knocked backward, and she landed on top of him. She could not breathe; her mouth gaped open but nothing came into it. The pain in her chest swelled to engulf her very mind. Both henchmen were staring at the blood dripping from her, and Andre took his mark. His target crumpled to the ground, blood gashing his own chest.

The other man scrambled away from the bleeding Katherine and gaped at Locque’s muzzle. White with shock, the thug dropped his own pistol and put up his hands, then glanced again at the choking, gurgling woman at his feet. “Sorry, babe,” Locque said to her, shoving her with his foot so that she lay on her side. He concentrated on his remaining victim, who was now half-standing and shuffling away from the muzzle trained on him. “I’ll ask you one last time—who put you up to this? Gogol?”

“Gul-what? Is that a name?” the man stammered. “No one did. I swear—”

“Qasim?”

“No one!” The henchman glanced at his dead partner. “Mark. It was Mark’s idea. He—”

“Get the fuck out of my sight,” Locque said in the deadest voice. The man gave Katherine one last, horrified glance, and staggered into a run. Locque’s gun followed his movement until he was out of sight.

Katherine took a huge gasp, finally, and Andre quickly knelt down to remove what remained of the jacket. The plastic bladder containing the fake blood fell out as he gingerly pulled at the laces and the metal. “No bug hunt goes as planned!” he said to Locque in outrage. “He might have killed her.”

Locque knelt too and examined Katherine. “No chance. For one thing, I had emptied their guns. Those Einsteins forgot to cover me—that’s a mistake! And for the love of Christ, March’s assets are frozen. Idiots.” With Katherine free of the vest, he took her gently in her arms. “Bring that jacket. Gather up all of the pieces. Then make the call. Mark’s idea, my ass—but I’ll get to the bottom of this.” But Andre stood for an extra moment and watched as Katherine’s bosom rose and fell with her labored breath. “She is all right—just got the wind knocked out of her. Get busy, so we can go inside. I think a certain lady is angry with me.”

#

It was an agent’s job to appear thick at times; in that, Bond’s work was similar to a detective’s, playing dumb. The difference was, Qasim very likely knew that Bond was called upon to act naïve, and therefore had likewise played innocent at the news of Locque’s murder of Lisl/Maggie—that, or Qasim Bayomi truly was surprised by it, and perhaps still had no clue that the two women were one and the same.

What Bond did not buy was that Locque had killed his former fiancé out of jealousy, any more than Columbo would have, as Kristatos had wanted Bond to believe.

Was it coincidence, or was it by plan that Locque’s and Maggie’s paths had crossed again so many years later? If by plan, whose? Locque’s?

Bond also did not buy the idea that Locque would infiltrate Israel on the orders of Egyptian turncoats. That was manufactured to appeal to Bond because of his country’s political interests, but the story was ludicrous. However, what really mattered was Qasim Bayoumi’s motivations in telling it. Bayoumi mixed lies with truth: he had been accurate in describing Locque’s psychiatrist, and likely had been reliable on the subject of Alain Locque. In addition, there was all this literary name-dropping, and Bond was torn as to actually take it seriously or not: Poe, Rimbaud, Baudelaire. Likely it was a feedback loop, created by Locque to entrap Katherine, then fed by her to Qasim and his guests, but Bond decided to keep an open mind. Perhaps there were real-life parallels here that were not being controlled by anyone and that could inform him.

Were Locque and Bayoumi allies, or enemies? Bond was sure that the answer to this would lead to answers regarding both of their current dealings with Gogol—who certainly was sufficiently clever and merciless to independently employ the two of them and set them against each other toward the same goal. Bond continued his stakeout of _Bayoumi’s_ with a clear purpose now.

Playing gumshoe, again. Just like the television detective Columbo, which Bond had found to be the most plausible of the fictional detectives. With a little luck and perseverance, the agent with the British Secret Service would act as a process server for Locque as well, but with a very special message from the deceased, real-life Columbo.

#

Locque carried Katherine into the bedroom and laid her gently on the covers. She was breathing regularly now, and he ran his hand over the reddened skin that showed from her low-cut gown. It was sore, but was just a dim echo of the pain earlier. “Well,” he said softly as he inspected her unbroken skin, “so far I’ve tied you up twice, slapped you, pointed a gun at you—twice—nearly crashed a car with you in it, almost threw you off a train _and_ an experimental aircraft, and shot you dead. I must really like you!”

“You let that man go,” she pointed out numbly. He wondered at her tone; did she expect him to kill them both? That did not seem like her.

“Of course—so he can go tell the world what a mean, cold dick I am, murdering a woman. I have one nasty reputation, sweet. Word of mouth will reach Bond; in fact, it may also reach your father. You could have some fun with that.” He sat her up to unzip her.

“Don’t you expect that guy to put two and two together, instead? It’s the oldest trick in the world.”

“No. I do not. And that’s an indication of the sorry pool of employees from which I must draw these days.” He sighed, as if lamenting this young generation of felons. “Bond will not be fooled, though. I want word to also reach him, but I don’t expect to fool him.”

“Why?” she asked, but he did not answer. She slipped the gown off quickly, despite her pain, and gave it a cursory folding so that the hidden pocket would not show. He undressed as well and slid beneath the sheets with her. His arm supported her head. She lay on her back and he lay on his side, looking at her and touching her gently. “Hungry?” he finally asked. “I can send out for something.”

“I’ve lost my appetite.”

“Tired, then?”

“I couldn’t sleep if I tried.”

He removed those glasses and set them down, then brought his face very close to hers, while his hands framed her face. “You have been _very brave_ ,” he said, giving her head a little shake. She didn’t reply. “I’m afraid those two choads made a liar out of me, but now I promise that the scary part is over. We’ll just stay here. It’s safe, and I can trust Andre.”

“How do you know?” she asked him. “How can someone who lives as you do trust anybody, even me?”

He looked hard at her; she was looking a little blank, and answering him remotely. He placed a finger on her chin and pressed his lips to hers. “Shh. Sweet girl. Stop worrying. Just let me hold you. Cling to me.”

He pulled her against him and wrapped his arms around her. She leaned against his chest but kept her eyes open. His hand smoothed back her hair as he rocked her slightly. Eventually her eyes closed and he squeezed her tight, rocking her with his breath. They were silent for a while.

She napped, then stirred against him, and awoke. He enjoyed her bird-like movements against his skin. “Do you know what? I think I’ll tie you up again,” Locque whispered playfully in her ear. “Normally I don’t go in for that sort of thing, but you never looked more womanly, tied up on my horse, like that actress from _The Shiek_. If it weren’t for Jens, I would have made you ride more than just one stallion.”

Katherine pressed her lips together. He was always goading her for some reason.

“Then perhaps I could finally bring you to orgasm without having to part all seven veils each time—Christ, it’s work. You’re a hard nut to crack. But a woman tied up is not responsible for the pleasure she feels. She does not have to answer to society for not being married—or being married—or not being sufficiently moral or any of that bullshit. So, she is free to experience anything she wants. That should be the banner image of the Women’s Movement: you, in a pretty hogtie.”

His lips twisted into what passed for him as a smile. Katherine knew that she was going to regret it, but she cast about for a worthy retort. He was stroking her thigh, and guffawed silently; she vibrated when she was angry, too. “Then,” he added, “I think I shall tape record your beautiful cries as you come—and send the tape to James Bond!”

Katherine sat up in outrage, her hands to her sore breastbone, and Locque began to laugh. “I’m—” she began, and his eyes sparkled encouragingly at her. “I’m going to start an all-girl band. Called…‘Just the Tip.’ And we’ll all be dressed as waitresses,” she added, “armed with machetes!”

He shook his head at her and was really laughing now, making guffaws like a normal man. “Don’t cut off the…hand that feeds you,” he teased her. “Although we have not explored that yet. I want to, you know.” He saw her wilt again; she always did when he brought up the subject. He did not like it. He had to be very careful with her. It was one thing for a woman to be afraid, but another for her to shut down at the mere mention of sex.

Katherine leaned her head on her knee. “How long are you going to keep me?”

“Ah. She _finally_ asks. You don’t have the same reactions as other women.” He put out his long arms and beckoned her into them, but she pulled back. He slipped his hands behind his head and looked at the ceiling then. “These are the salad days, girl. Be with me and enjoy it. I am, as you said, waiting to get a special message—and then I’ll be gone, and out of your hair. It could end soon enough, if I don’t find out who besides Bond is trying to kill me.”

“James doesn’t want to kill you. He only wants—”

“Yes, he does want to kill me, pet. And he’s going to have to, because I’m not going to be taken alive again.”

“Were you in prison?” she asked then.

“Of course I was!”

She shifted to more comfortably sit and look down at him. “What’s it like?”

His eyes rolled to pierce her. “I’d rather be dead. So would you. You’re too sensitive—a mark. A free spirit dies in prison. Besides, there is the noise. If one has to put up with the din, war is better.”

“I don’t really believe in prisons, anyway,” she offered shyly.

His brilliant smile flashed again. “You don’t believe that society has an obligation to protect sweet young things like you from men like me?” She did not answer. “No,” he said then, “I’m not surprised. One, you’re a goody two-shoes, but not a self-righteous one. You face facts. I love that combination. Two, you’ve read all of that crap by Rimbaud, Poe, Baudelaire, and your surrealists, and it’s addled your little feminist brain.” He ran a finger down her cheek. “You don’t like prisons the same way that you don’t like marriage, or the idea of getting pregnant, or anything else that is a trap, but feminism is a trap just like prison, so you’re ambivalent about a career, too. Your surrealists deplored drudgery.” His lips twisted again. “How are you ever going to run for President, saying things like, ‘Unable to suppress love, the Church wanted at least to disinfect it, and it created marriage’? Is that conducive to a career? To feminist legislation? Are you going to stand up at the United Nations and say, ‘Morality is the weakness of the brain’? and end up a hard-drinking old skank like Lee Miller? What would _James Bond_ think?”

_Some time you’re going to stop laughing at me_. “I thought you didn’t care about that ‘crap,’” she deflected.

He knew that she was changing the subject away from his cock, but he decided to follow her down this side alley; sooner or later he would anger her again and make her rally to another passionate surrender. “I enjoyed it once, as much as you do now, because they were trying to eliminate all of the bullshit. But even they recognized that quoting literary figures is also bullshit: ‘Written poetry is worth reading once, and then should be destroyed. Let the dead poets make way for others.’ So why quote them?”

“You just did,” she pointed out.

He deflected her in turn, as if he had expected that parry by her. “Of course, none of them _lived_ what they wrote, except for three, perhaps: Artaud, Desnos, and Rimbaud. They championed life over literature, lived tragic lives, and now, they’ve become literary figures themselves! That is a trap, as well. I rejected it. I was once quite the scholar, like you.”

Her eyes flashed in sudden remembrance. “You were quite the plagiarist! Why didn’t you submit one of your original poems for that prize, one of those that you left with Professor Verstraeten, instead of the mish-mash that won? Did you plagiarize other poets to ensure that you would win and become, briefly, a _literary figure_ yourself?”

Locque blinked several times—expressive for him. She allowed herself a gloating smile. He sat up too and took her by the shoulders, not bothering to disguise his surprise. She wondered if there was admiration, too, in his face. “Little detective!” He put his hand to her cheek and stroked it with his thumb. “You’ve put your finger on it, but I was not a hypocrite. I became a lettrist to expose the hypocrisy of writing itself. I had discovered, by that time, that I could churn out poems that had my professors in raptures, yet I felt nothing. Writing isn’t living.”

“It is for me.”

“Because it gives you a sense of adventure. That is a born writer, not a cultivated one, as I was. I loathed writing, but was pressured to do it because of my ‘talent,’ when it meant no more to me than producing mathematical proofs. It made me feel dead, not alive—and I could not care less if others read my swill and feel alive. Still has my poems, does he?” he asked, and she nodded. “Well, remember, your surrealists also disdained talent. Poetry to them was an attitude, not a form. If you have an adventure writing something that others will have an adventure reading, then that is rare, and that is living, and your ability to write something like that is like what I do now. What I do now is closer to poetry than scrawling those stupid poems.”

Her jaw dropped, and he laughed at her again. Katherine could only splutter, “It’s not the same at all—there’s nothing—you and I are nothing alike—”

“You and I are extremely alike. You’re discontent with everything, including the library. You hate routine and want adventure. You stripped down to your lovely undies because it was fun. You were sticking it to society, just like you stuck it to your father. And you still don’t know what to become, because you’re restless and don’t want to be pigeonholed. You don’t belong to anyone or anything, and I particularly like that.

“Likewise, anyone can make up this or that reason for me, but you already have your answer: ‘It is the action which causes the thought.’ I do what I do because I like it. I’m good at it. It’s fun. I enjoy what I enjoy, and I do it. I kept doing it and that became my life. No one knows why we like what we do, or how that comes about. There are too many causes—or none.”

He noted that she was listening, and seemingly without anger now. “Your surrealist poet Robert Desnos went into a trance and improvised poetry for hours, just reciting it without anyone writing it down. Other surrealists wrote poems and buried or burned them. Artaud traveled to Mexico and took peyote in a pagan ritual. Your Frida Kahlo fucked Leon Trotsky and then kicked him to the curb. Action. And I talk to women. It’s more interesting than talking to men—I say what I need to say to men, then kick them out of here and go find a woman to talk to. Most men in this business are the opposite.

“I get women to open up and drop the barriers that society has taught them to erect. ‘Yes’ means ‘no’ with most women, until I force them to be honest the only way that they can be honest, my way. Talk is a form of sex, and sex is fear, and fear is adventure.

“So you see, sweet, I have not left poetry behind. I live it, as Artaud did, and Desnos, and as you could. I’m not like Rimbaud. He completely turned his back on poetry to become a gun-runner—but he was a sociopath, unlike me.”

She narrowed her eyes suspiciously then.

He took her hands and placed them on his chest. “So, why don’t you let down the wall, and let’s fuck. I want you. You turn me on and have, ever since that afternoon in Brussels. I have been more than patient.” He pulled her closer so that their bodies touched. “Come on, baby.”

“You want to have sex? Because you’re tired of talking, which is sex?”

He gave her that biting, predatory smile. “Because you’re the first woman that I have really been able to talk to, instead of just play games with. Because you protest too much. Because you drive me mad. Because.”

She looked frightened again so he loosened his grip and stretched out on his back once more. “Let’s try this: you sit on me and do whatever is comfortable. If anything hurts, stop. But I’m tired of doing all of the work.” He gripped her arm and slowly pulled her toward him. “I’m not asking you.” She hunched her shoulders but was not able to resist his tug on both of her forearms. “Slide it just between your legs at first, if you want. You’re not a virgin! Loosen up.”

He pulled her on top of him. She complied and straddled him, and he gazed up at her.

“Are you one of these women who don’t like penetration?” he teased her.

In no way was she going to stroke his massive ego by expressing fears about his size compared to hers. “No, I just don’t like to be pigeonholed,” she shot back without thinking.

He chuckled, but not scathingly. She took his penis and pressed it to her vulvar lips, rubbing it gently there so to ease the entry. “You could,” he said, “engage in a little foreplay, you know!”

“Forget it, poet,” she mocked him. “This is a slam-bam-thanky-man!”

“Oh, don’t you count on it,” he jeered.

#

She had fallen asleep lying on him, her head in the hollow of his shoulder, and as she awoke she felt his finger wipe at some moisture that had escaped her lips. She pursed them self-consciously. When she lifted her head, he smiled at her, warmly and without ridicule. “Good morning, nymph.”

He rolled her onto her side and sat up. He laid a hand on her head. “I would rather stay in bed with you, but work intrudes. Sleep as long as you want. You need the rest.” He left her alone. She lay in the bed for a few more minutes, but was restless and unable to sleep again. She threw off the covers and put on a robe.

After washing up and finding a band to secure her hair, she walked out toward the kitchen, passing Locque, who was on that phone again. He looked at her bare feet in distaste, and lowered the receiver to his chest. “Put some shoes on.”

“Why, what difference does it make?”

“Put. Some. Shoes. On!” he intoned ominously. Sighing, Katherine turned and padded back to the bedroom, and emerged some moments later with low-heeled pumps—the most comfortable shoes that she could find. Locque’s eyes flashed their warning. “A lady wears shoes both outside a house and inside.”

Katherine wished that she had a pair of combat boots to stomp around in. She continued to the kitchen, which was an open one and really just an extension of the main room. When she opened a cupboard, she was momentarily startled to see the amount of jars and packages there, when her own cupboard was so bare. Locque lowered the phone again. “Yes, poet, there is _food_ ,” he teased as she turned to look at him. “You may _eat_ it. Put some flesh on your bones, skinny!” He turned back to the phone and she reached eagerly for the farina. While cooking the cereal, she tried to eavesdrop on his conversation over the stove, but he was mostly scratching with a pen on a pad of paper, and not speaking.

When she approached the table in the main room with her tray, Locque looked approvingly at her hot cereal with butter and cinnamon on it, and at the cream in her coffee. “Take that out to the balcony and don’t spy on me.” She followed where he pointed, and was startled to see that the frosted windows were open to the warm autumn day. Two of them were French doors that opened onto a balcony, and she stepped through them and set her breakfast down on the wrought iron table that was there. It was a warm day and she looked out at the red and yellow leaves still clinging to the branches. This was not an apartment after all, but the second floor of a large house, surrounded by woods—this apartment was like a safe, completely self-contained when locked. She could see no other stairwell except the long one outside of the apartment that led to the underground garage. She heard Locque say something inside, and Andre answered.

Andre stepped onto the balcony too, and Katherine felt shy, sitting there in her robe. The henchman quietly looked back at Locque, then approached her and laid a hand on her arm. Katherine was startled that he would dare to touch her. Andre leaned close to whisper, “Has he hurt you?”

She stared at him. The lines around his pale blue eyes deepened. “No…” she whispered back.

Andre gave her arm a little squeeze and quickly left the balcony. She sat, looking at his retreating back.


	14. Strings

When she finished her meal, she returned to the kitchen to wash her dishes. It felt absurd to be tripping around on those heels. Locque set down the phone and watched as she soaped and rinsed the dishes in the hot running water. The kitchen sink had a flash water heater, unlike her apartment, so she did not have to heat water on the stove and pour it in a dishpan. When she laid out a dishtowel on the counter and set the cleaned dishes and pan on it, she realized that Locque had stood up to continue watching her. She gave him a frown and decided to make some tea instead of coffee. As if transfixed he kept his eyes on her hands as she worked. She washed the teapot after putting water on to boil and she had put her hair back, too, he noticed. “So Pocahontas had tidied up the teepee the other day.”

“What?” Katherine asked, stopped in the act of choosing a tea cozy for the loose tea. Locque gave her a single shake of the head and a smile, and retreated to his phone.

“I want to take these shoes off,” she told him.

“You’ll want to keep those shoes on,” he ordered.

She thumped the teapot onto the burner and stood glowering into the blue flame beneath it. Locque turned back to his phone. Steeling herself, Katherine walked around the stove very primly until she reached the main room, then stomped across the floor in her heels past him and back toward the bedroom. The hair on her neck lifted and she was sure that at any second he would be stomping right behind her, but she kept it up until she reached the bedroom door. She hid behind it and peeked out to see what he was doing. To her surprise he was still sitting and writing on his notepad, that phone to his ear.

She emerged and stomped her foot again. Locque’s eyes flashed beneath his brows, but he still did not react. Emboldened, she shrugged off her robe. The door to the apartment was shut, and Andre was outside, so she stomped across the floor again completely naked. Out of the corner of her eye she saw that Locque had raised his head, but she made a big production out of adjusting the burner’s flame, ignoring him. “No,” said Locque into the phone, “it’s just some little gamin trying to tell me that she doesn’t have a stitch to wear.” Without a parting word he set down the phone, unplugged it, and wrapped it in its wire.

_Stomp_! said Katherine’s foot on the floor. She tromped back around the stove and into the main room, where she smiled at Locque as he set down the phone and regarded her passively. She stood and he sat looking at each other.

Something changed in his face as he continued to stare. Her triumph wavered in the gathering of something behind those eyes, when his face had not moved one muscle. Then, he began to grin, slowly and evilly. Katherine turned and ran in blind panic and he propelled himself out of his chair after her.

He caught her by the arm at the doorway to the bedroom and dragged her to the bed. He threw her down onto it on her stomach and quickly caught her by the wrists, and held them in one hand. He leaned one thigh against the back of her knees. With the other hand he delivered a stinging slap on her bare buttocks. “Aren’t we the noisy one, then!” he demanded, spanking her.

“Ouch! Stop it!” she shouted as he continued to slap her pinkening buttocks.

“Your Robert Desnos wrote a lot about spanking, as I recall.” _Slap_ , _slap_ , _slap_. It echoed her earlier cadence on the floor.

“I said stop!”

“You are enjoying this,” Locque said with a snigger. He adjusted his blow so that it caught her on the fleshier underside of her buttocks. He only stopped long enough to maul her earlobe with his teeth, then struck her some more. She leaned her forehead into the pillow and stifled any more protests.

“I’m not hurting you!” he said.

“Then why do it?” Her voice was muffled by the pillow.

He let go of her wrists and slipped his arms around her instead. He stuck his tongue in her ear before she could twist her head away. “ _Because you told me to_ , you tease!”

He released her and sat on the edge of the bed, smiling at her as she scrambled away from him. She reached down for her robe and threw it around her, saying, “Don’t you ever do that again!” in a stern, prim voice. Locque laughed.

“Get dressed, you little idiot,” he said, “you’re going shopping.” Still smiling, he left the bedroom. The tea kettle began to whistle, but its announcement was cut short.

#

When she entered the main room once more, she saw that that telephone, as she had suspected, was nowhere to be seen. With determination, Katherine tightened her grip on the clutch purse that she had picked out, which held a sheet of Bond’s stationery in an envelope, and glanced at the French doors, which were still open. Locque turned from the window to look her up and down. She started toward the front door, but he strode forward and stopped her with a hand on her arm. He examined her more closely. “Earrings. Don’t you know how to complete an outfit?”

She sighed and went to the bedroom to look in jewelry box on the bureau. He trailed her.

“She thinks I’m so shallow!” Locque sat on the bed and smiled at her as she searched through the jewelry. “Wearing shoes and jewelry is no different, my dear, than teaching yourself to dine without switching hands—and it was obvious to everyone that you had taught yourself the Continental customs. You did very well, but no one worries about using the proper fork these days—eating meat with a salad fork is ‘in.’ Everyone is doing it to show how democratic and open-minded they are. And they all appreciated your manners, but next time, do not thank the servants when they pour your wine or remove your plate. It’s not done.”

She selected a pair of pearl earrings, finding everything else a bit too flashy for her taste. “That seems rude.”

“Of course it’s rude, but not to snobs. It’s rude, but it’s not impolite—that’s social class for you—and I mean, the _servants_ are the snobs. _They_ will look down on you as a social climber if you engage in any more of your homespun friendliness.” He approached her and looked her up and down again, and seemed satisfied. “If you’re going to act Old Money, learn all of the rules—and then you can learn how to break them intelligently, as Old Money does.”

“I am a social climber,” she argued, feeling defeated. He shook his head at her. “But I am, of course I am. Look at that closet, full of dresses that I could never wear. I was the odd girl out at the party, and everyone could tell in five minutes that I was no debutante. I’m useful, not decorative. I’m the first one in my family to attend a university. I was raised to do nothing but be a nanny to my brothers and sisters, and keep house, and sing carols on a street corner while waving religious tracts in people’s faces—like something right out of _An American Tragedy_. I did not grow up with what you had. There are different classes of people.”

“That’s true,” he admitted. “That, however, does not really matter. You are head and shoulders above all the other women I have known, for in reality, there are only two classes of people: those who survive, and those who do not. _You_ are a survivor, not a debutante, and in fact you are a fighter, because you have a certain cunning. You are smart, and precise, and you keep your yap shut _most of the time_ , and so I put you in the same class as me.”

These words stunned her. She was so certain that he looked down on her. “What do you mean—cunning?”

There was a hard edge to his smile. “That winsome aura of yours. Your seeming guilelessness. You have the ability to make people trust you, and that’s a good trick. You know how to make yourself valuable as well.”

She protested, “It’s not a trick.”

He did not reply, but gave her a final perusal.

#

It was strange to be in the car without Emile Locque, who had barely left her alone since the evening of Qasim’s party. However, she sat in the back of the new sedan and Andre drove her to _Bayoumi’s_. Andre escorted her into the salon, and Qasim himself took charge of her, handing her over to a hairdresser. When her hair was finished, Andre showed up and lead her to the clothing boutique and stood aside to watch her.

She hated shopping, so she decided to do it her way: she stalked the jewelry department, then went to the ladies’ clothes and swept each garment aside quickly, and worked through most racks without taking anything off the pole. When she did remove a garment, it was for a quick perusal, perhaps to be draped across her shoulders, only to be returned.

“Do you mean that, in all of these clothes, you have found nothing to wear?” Andre finally asked. Katherine looked at him, then seized the nearest dress from its pole, held it in front of her, and transformed from an attractive young woman into a tulle-clad pixie. Andre waved his hand at the monstrosity and gave her a smile. “You look like a punk ballerina!”

“Everything is ugly,” Katherine said helplessly. If she grabbed a random outfit and went into the dressing room she could leave Bond a note, but she wanted to do so at the apartment, if she could get the chance to be out of Locque’s and Andre’s sight, and someplace other than in the parking garage or that apartment.

“There you are!” boomed a voice. It was Qasim. “Andre, what is she doing here? My dear, you’ll want to see the models in the Gold Room. Nothing from a rack for you!” He offered his arm.

In the Gold Room, Katherine sat in a chair with Qasim standing beside her, and chose the outfits on the models who paraded for her, like the actress Kim Novak from _Vertigo_ as she was being made over by Jimmy Stewart. Katherine chose, and Qasim mostly applauded her choices, although he at times tried to steer her toward more ostentatious outfits that revolted her. He appeared more casual with her than the other night, touching her hair or her shoulder occasionally. Something about it alarmed her. Andre had been sent to the car and she was alone with the Egyptian, aside from these walking clothes hangers.

“These are madame’s size,” said the floor manager, handing Katherine a pair of shoes. She tried them on, and noticed that something blocked the toe in one of them. Qasim had stepped aside to speak to the old, matronly manager, so she stuck her fingers in the shoe and drew out a crumpled note. It said:

_I am in the dressing room. Make some excuse and come. James Bond._

#

James stood and smiled at Katherine as she entered, carrying the outfits that she had wanted to try on personally. She slid the bolt and turned to him. “How is it with you, Katherine?” the agent asked.

_No more Miss March_ , she thought. She wondered how much he knew about her and Locque. “I’m fine. Really, James, I’m all right.”

“Thank God.” He took her hand and she sat on the bench behind him. “We don’t have much time. You must let me know where Locque’s villa is. _Short_ notes only, Katherine.”

“It’s difficult, James. I am watched. I am inside most of the time—but I’ll try tonight. I am earning his trust—somewhat.”

He grimaced in sympathy. “I would rather not, but I must ask you: do you know anything of Locque’s relationship with a man named Gogol?”

The name set off alarm bells in her mind. “Locque asked two men who tried to kill him if ‘Gogol’ had put them up to it.”

Her answer seemed to surprise him; she watched as his eyes assumed a faraway look, as if he had been expecting a different response. “And that’s not all, James. Qasim said something in Arabic to his own men when I was at his house Saturday night.” Everything was such a jumble in her mind that she could not remember if this was Monday or Tuesday. “He said a number of things that Locque did not understand but I did. First off, Locque went to Spain to try to bribe someone—a Cuban named Gonzalez.”

“To bribe Gonzalez. That cannot be it,” Bond replied. “Locque was there to pay off Gonzalez for a job already done, incidentally—” and he gave her a hard look, “—for the murders of two innocent people, a marine biologist and his wife.”

“I know what I _heard_ , James—to bribe this man, so that he would double-cross someone named ‘Christatos.’” She saw the outright surprise that registered on Bond’s face. “And there’s something else. Qasim said, ‘Who would have thought that Locque and Bond would be fighting on the same side? This can work to our advantage.’ He said this all in Arabic when I was eavesdropping. Locque doesn’t know any of this.”

Bond paused, and thought fiercely. “Either Qasim knew about you and was deliberately feeding _you_ false information—which I find highly unlikely—or Locque is quite the puppet master, misleading Qasim and his men as well.”

“I don’t get that impression, James. I think that both you and he are in danger!”

Bond put his hand over hers. “Katherine, listen to me. Emile Locque is a sociopath. He is a hired killer and nothing else. He has no feelings; he lacks all empathy, humanity. He has killed many people, and he killed a good friend of mine for the express purpose of bringing _me_ into this fight. I was sure that Locque was dead, in Albania! Why resurrect himself, if he wants no quarrel?

“I know what he does to women, talking to them, tricking them, breaking them down and building them up—and he knows that you cannot be flattered by nice clothes and jewelry, Katherine. He is appealing to your intelligence and using your emotions against you, but it is all a game to him. All right, let’s assume that he has been telling the truth—about his father, who I agree is a disturbing sort, about not killing a few people whose deaths I wrongly blamed on him—he is still a merciless killer, and nothing more.”

“I know all about Stockholm Syndrome,” she countered. “Give me some credit, James! I do not love Emile Locque.”

Bond shook his head in frustration. “As it happens, I do not believe in Stockholm Syndrome—it’s too simplistic. Locque doesn’t need you to love him; he merely needs you to believe that he could be warm toward you. I’m talking about cold reading, picking up on your emotional triggers, manipulating you into thinking that _he_ cares for _you_ —the same trick that your father employed with his congregation, before he started using the mini-transmitters.”

“James Bond,” Katherine said severely, “if Emile Locque is indeed a cold-hearted killer then no little rich boy from a Belgian horse farm is going to be better at cold reading than I am! I know all about it—in fact, I am better at it than even my father, because I let the other person do the talking. It _takes_ a heart to do a cold reading; empathy is _required_ , paradoxically. That’s why my father is so evil—he can put himself in his victim’s shoes and still stand to go through with it, and I cannot. I don’t care if Locque loves me or not, for I can cold-read him better than he can me. What I care about is that the two of you are engaged in this macho standoff while someone larger than the two of you is manipulating you both, with me in the middle. This man named Gogol.”

Bond was silent, looking at her. She stared angrily back at him. At length, he passed a hand across his chin and said, “Locque works for Gogol, or at least he did.”

“Well, now Locque thinks that this Gogol is hiring men to kill him. His own men. One of them threatened me.”

“That makes no sense, either,” Bond mused. “Something is wrong.” He scowled, casting about inwardly. “I don’t like it.”

“Are you trying to kill Locque?” she pressed him.

Bond averted his eyes. “My orders are to take Locque alive.”

“But do you _want_ to kill him?”

Bond did not answer.

“He thinks you do. He says that you won’t let you take him alive, James—that he’ll never go back to prison.”

“Well,” Bond replied, “he is wrong.” He stood up. “I don’t want to leave you, but I cannot risk staying here any longer. You must go back out there. But come hell or high water, Katherine, flip my stationery onto a low rooftop at Locque’s place tonight!”

#

When she emerged from the dressing room with her mostly untried garments, but wearing her new grey suit and shoes, Qasim was waiting for her. Something about his manner made her heart sink. “Ah! So quick! And my dear, you left these at my house the other night.” In his hands he held both the sable stole and the pearl earrings.

“Those are not mine,” she said in confusion.

“They are a gift,” he replied. “No strings attached. There is more where this came from. Plenty, in fact.”

She shrugged, laid down her collection, then took the stole from him and laid it on top of the pile. She took the earrings from him and placed them in a box from the bag of jewelry that she had chosen as well. Andre appeared, thrusting himself through the door as if he had burst from a cake; she wondered if he had napped in the car and lost track of time. That did not seem like him, but then again, he was Locque’s sole employee at present. Qasim stood by and smiled as the henchman carted off her—or rather Locque’s—purchases. Suddenly it occurred to her that Qasim had found her note to Bond from the other night.

“There are strings, and there are strings,” Katherine told him impulsively.

Qasim furrowed his brow. “I don’t follow you.”

Katherine placed a hand over her heart and made the gesture of plucking a string. “Heart strings! Don’t offer too many gifts to country girls.”

“Oh.” Qasim laughed, while she watched him closely. “I should think that would rather be a warning meant for you, not to trustfully accept what Locque promises. If I may say, and this is not meant as a criticism my dear, you do not seem to have put up much of a fight.”

Katherine nodded, as if ruefully. “Well, that may be true, but…neither did he.” She smiled tolerantly when Qasim laughed again. It was becoming evident to her that he was not going to escort her back to the car just yet. Perhaps Andre would return for her.

Qasim took a step toward her, his brown eyes suddenly losing their genial, unfocused light. It took all of her resolve not to take a step back in turn. “You and he are completely mismatched,” said the Egyptian.

She did not like the look of the brown scrub that showed through his open collar. “Why do you say that? Because I’m short, ordinary, a Yank, and not a member of his underworld?”

“You are a charming short Yank,” he replied, and his hand stole to touch a lock of her hair. “And you are far from ordinary!”

“Everyone is special,” she argued.

“Not like you.” He smiled at her strangely, and Katherine wanted nothing else than to get away from him. All he needed was a medallion on a gold chain to complete the facade. “You can do better, my dear. Despite your origin. You can do much, much better, climb higher.”

“I don’t think that doing better and climbing higher necessarily go together.”

“Oh, how would _you_ know?” He put his hands on her shoulders. Katherine swallowed hard.

“Come with me now,” Qasim urged. “Come with me, right now, and Locque will never be able to reclaim you. You would be the mistress of my home and have anything that you desire. I won’t turn you back out into the street without a penny, as he will. You would want for nothing. We could travel, live the good life, for as long as it lasts. My women gain a great deal by their associations with me and are set up for life.”

She backed away from him.


	15. The One

Katherine went to the door of _Bayoumi’s_ by herself and told one of the desk attendants—who stood ready to bar her way out the door, she noticed—to summon Andre with the car. It arrived at the curb, and along with Andre were two men: Locque, and a new henchman.

The new one, a black-haired young man with a cynical face like a fist, came out of the sedan to escort her instead of Andre. Away from the other men, he gave Katherine a saucy look and remarked, “Man, Locque must really be desperate,” to no one in particular. She decided to ignore this and she sailed confidently toward the sedan. Andre came around and opened the door for her, and Locque was in the back. To her displeasure, the new hire also climbed back in next to Andre, riding shotgun. This man immediately turned his leering face her way. She decided to make a display of smiling at Locque and giving him a kiss.

“Who put a coin in you?” Locque demanded, amused but not fooled by her first smile at him.

She ran her fingers through the hair at her neck. “You did.”

“Ah,” he only said.

There was a newspaper in the back seat, but to her disappointment it only contained the entertainment section. To pass the time as the new guy stared at her, and to see how much she could get away with, she made up parody names for the movies that were playing: _Personal Breast_ , _Catty People_ , _Some Kind of Zero_ , _Mega Norse_ , _The Thingie_ , _Greased Too_ , _Yes Giorgio Moroder_ , and _Agent! Agent!_ “I don’t get the last one,” griped the new hire, and Andre had to explain that the original movie title was _Author! Author!_ Locque’s mouth tightened into a line, but he tolerated Katherine’s puns. “ _Eating Kristatos_ ,” Andre piped up suddenly, and was rewarded by an evil stretch of Locque’s lips.

“Who’s Kristatos?” Katherine asked innocently.

“Worm meat, that’s who he is,” Locque replied with an eerie gleam.

The new guy, who had not been able to take his eyes from Katherine all this time, piped up, “Kristatos was such a—” Seeing Andre’s glance, he stopped.

“No, that’s all right, Bernard; she doesn’t have a clue as to who you’re talking about,” Locque said mildly. “Dish. I want to hear it.”

Bernard turned around eagerly and got his shoulders into the conversation. “Well, first of all, I worked for Hector Gonzalez, and after he got shot by that arrow I was driving one of the chase cars after Bond and the bird. And I would have shot them both and be done with it, but Hable said, ‘No, no, we might hit villagers,’ so I tried to run them off the road instead. Well, thanks to Hable, both of us and the other men too ended upside down in the damn car on that road, and those fucking villagers threw chestnuts at us as we spun around upside down. So, Gonzalez is dead, see, and I decided to leave Spain and offer my services to Kristatos. He hired me straight off but did not let me do anything! If I had rode one of those motorcycles after Bond in Cortina, I would have _got_ him.”

 _Ridden_ , thought Katherine automatically. _Gotten_.

Locque was stroking Katherine’s cheek with the back of his fingers, and Bernard was watching the movement of his hand in a way that unnerved her. Locque, in turn, seemed to be watching Bernard’s scrutiny. “Is it true,” Locque asked, “that Kristatos tried to kill Bond and that Havelock bitch by running them down in the water with his ship—and her being a scuba diver and a snorkeler, to boot?”

“Yes, can you believe it?” Bernard jeered. “And then—‘Oh, well, I don’t see them bobbing around anymore, they’re dead, let’s make port.’ I fucking quit as soon as my feet hit the dock.”

“I can believe it.” The way that Locque said it alerted Katherine to the possibility that the assassin already knew the story and was testing his new hire. Bernard, however, looked oblivious and Locque smiled at him. “Let me tell you something about Aris Kristatos: he would set a mousetrap to kill a fly. He was the most incompetent boss I ever had, and so vain that he plotted in front of a mirror with a matching cravat, like a villain out of a movie. Do you know that he was awarded the King’s Medal by England for his supposed resistance fighting in Crete during World War II? He didn’t earn it, of course, but he wore that sad medal on his person every day and every second for the rest of his life. Up until the very end, that is, for I heard that Milos Columbo tried to snatch the medal from his body after killing him, but nobody ever found it.”

“Kristatos was a poof,” said Bernard as Andre pulled into the underground garage.

“No, worse—Kristatos was a paedophile, panting after that dim bulb Bibi Dahl. She, of course, was after Kriegler, and Kriegler and Apostis made that ship bob in the water when we were all Kristatos’ guests in the Aegean before going to Cortina. Then, of course, Kristatos invited a bunch of local heifers on board for us to choose from, and they stampeded toward Kriegler, too, like the cows they were. Poor Bibi was brokenhearted. I managed to nab a few women who were quite sweet, but one claimed to speak to ghosts and another played Jane Fonda’s exercise video morning, noon, and night! The next time I’m on a vessel it’s going to be _mine_.”

Andre chuckled. “I heard about what you did to Kriegler, on that ship—fucking A!” Bernard crowed.

Locque turned to Katherine, but kept one eye on Bernard. “Listen, my dear, I am going to have to have a little _tête-à-tête_ with my new men in the front room. I don’t expect that you will particularly enjoy the company of such vermin, but be a good girl and go about your business without minding them. Do not hide in the bedroom, but do not interject yourself, either. You are a dignified, cherished mistress, and they are scum. Remember that.”

“All right,” Katherine said shyly. He looked her up and down with approval. Her smile before had been false, but now the corners of her mouth turned up in a natural, pleasant expression, and she seemed more cooperative. The changes in her from the salon had only been small touches as he had instructed, but they showed off the wave in her hair, the color of her eyes, and her figure, which was diminutive and curved, not reedy and weirdly elongated as was becoming the fashion for women. Other men of his height had confided to him their preference for petite girls, and after last night he knew why.

They pulled into the underground garage, and Katherine could see no evidence of bloodstains. Locque nodded to Bernard, who got out of the car. When Andre opened Locque’s door, Locque paused, watching the new hire stride toward the door. “I’m going to feel this one out a bit more,” he said to Andre with a tight grip on Katherine. “As long as that one’s around, don’t let the girl out of your sight.”

Andre nodded, and imitated Bernard’s voice, “‘I would have shot them both and be done with it’—being ‘done with it’ meaning he would have had a little fun with their bodies afterward, and maybe even the bodies of any villagers he would have hit.”

“Is that what people say?” Locque asked. “Christ. But then, people talk shit about me, too. We all play that game.” He finally got out and held out a hand for Katherine. This time she clung tightly to it.

#

A group of five men gathered with Andre and Bernard in the front room. The apartment was locked up tight once again, and even the doors to the balcony were shut, for the weather had turned chilly once more. Katherine changed into a casual pants suit and slippers that she had chosen and set about doing small domestic chores, such as hanging up her new clothes and putting away the dry dishes. Bernard kept on leering at her whenever he got the chance, and Andre glared at him; several of the other men gave Bernard a jaundiced look as well for his disrespect in front of Locque. When she caught a couple of the strangers assessing her more covertly, her heart beat fast in her chest but she gave them a cool look and went back to her work.

The dishes done, she wiped the counter and the table. She decided to wash the underwear that she had bought, and put them into the tiny clothes washer in the corner of the women’s bathroom. She also decided to pull out the drawers of make-up and heave the items into the wastebasket. The sound of plastic containers and glass jars falling into the basket brought Locque over to see what she was doing.

He nodded his approval. “I suppose that is long overdue.”

“It is,” Katherine said acidly, “unless you were planning to breed E. Coli in here!”

He left and she resumed her cleaning, wiping out the drawers and replacing them, and setting in them the few make-up items that she trusted were safe to use. She cleaned the bathroom, then took out her damp underthings and hung them on the shower rod and towel racks. Then she washed up and went back out to the kitchen to make something for supper.

Locque gave her a big grin that was not characteristic of him, and turned up the radio that had been murmuring. Katherine groaned when the announcer, who had been narrating a news program, pronounced her father’s name and played a segment of her father’s regular morning show. “I know all of his sermons by heart already!” Katherine griped. The men turned in their chairs to smile at her, not very pleasantly. Bernard leered again. Katherine glared back at him. “A Mighty Earworm/Is This Song,” she sang along with the hymn that always opened her father’s show. In defiance of the mocking looks from Locque and his men, she went about making a sandwich while her father began his opening monologue.

“My God, what a fucking ignoramus,” Bernard said, staring directly at Katherine.

“Your what?” she asked innocently. “Your god? Do you believe in God, Mr. Bernard?”

“It’s not ‘Mr.’ Bernard,” the henchman shot back, taking the bait.

“Bernard thinks that you’ve become really desperate, by the way,” Katherine found the courage to say to Locque. “He told me so.” She smiled toward Bernard but she was not able to look directly at him; she slitted her eyes and looked at his mouth, and hoped that he did not notice how nervous she was.

Locque’s eyes looked blank but he did not show surprise. “Desperate about what?”

“Oh, I hate to be a tattle-tail,” she simpered. To her surprise, Andre turned and gave her a wink. The rest of the men looked very serious; they were no longer laughing at her.

She continued making her sandwich. Her father’s voice filled the room: “…To accept Jesus Christ as your personal savior, or be consigned to the flames of hell!”

“Not to leave this apartment in hell, even if Jesus Christ comes to get me,” Katherine muttered, parodying the two prince’s guards in _Monty Python and the Holy Grail_. Her father’s voice continued to drone on about the eternal punishment awaiting the damned. “Until Jesus Christ comes to get me, we’re not to enter hell. Or leaving hell—yes! Can Satan leave hell with us?” She smirked in turn. “Mother! I mean…Father— Satan has huge…tracks of land…”

“Oh, shut up,” Locque said to her, and reaped more smirks from the men, except for Andre.

She did, and finished making her sandwich, which she put on a plate to carry to the bedroom. She felt Locque’s glower at her as she walked very carefully and quietly across the main room in her slippers. Her father was now pressing the point of a literal six-day creation, and she whirled on the threshold of the bedroom to proclaim, “Do you think that a tornado could construct a perfect 747 plane? And I’ve never seen a dog turn into a cat! Take that, biologists!”

She heard the men collapse into sniggers and Locque’s footsteps thunder across the floor. “Aw, Locque, leave her alone. She’s more entertaining than he is,” said a masculine voice that she did not recognize. “This bloke is a plank.”

“She’s like Alan Thicke, but for radio,” said another man.

Locque, however, was filling the door with his frame and Katherine set down her plate before she could drop it. She could not gather the courage to look at him, and for some reason she could not stop giggling. “Look at me,” Locque commanded.

She put a hand to her mouth and tried to stop laughing, but she could not, and it did not make sense because she was really scared.

“I said, look at me!”

Both hands to her mouth and shaking like a leaf, she shook her head.

He came forward into the room. Her knees were beginning to buckle, and she still could not dare to see his eyes. He reached out, but his hand, though firm, was gentler on her arm than before, but even so the press of it was inescapable. He sat down on the chaise at the end of the bed and pulled her into his lap, holding her there as if she were a child.

She still could not look at his face. “Do you think,” Locque said very seriously, “that these men are laughing with you, or at you?” He waited. Katherine took her hands from her mouth and tried to answer, but collapsed into helpless guffaws when she really did not want to laugh at all. It was awful. He shook her. “Hmm? It’s not funny, you little snot. Answer me.”

“They’re laughing with me,” Katherine managed.

“They’re laughing _at you_. Now, knock it off!”

Still not looking at him, she straightened up in anger. “I’ll knock it off, but it’s not fair. They look to _you_ to see how to act around me. If you humiliate me in front of them, they will see me as fair game and regard _you_ as a friend instead of a leader!” Still without meeting his eyes, she raised her chin.

He was silent. She braced herself for what was to come—a stinging retort, a pinch, a slap, but he did nothing. He could hear his breathing and feel his hand idly stroking her waist. Unbidden, the tears came to her eyes, angering her. If she could not find a way to remain calm around him he would never take her seriously.

“Aw, don’t,” Locque said, his knuckle swiping beneath her eye. “Very logically stated, indeed. You’re absolutely correct.” She resisted his hand when he pulled her chin but he put each hand on either side of her head and made her look at him finally. “I will take that pack of jackals into the side room and out of your way. But go back out there to eat. Don’t hide in here.” He brushed her lips with his and stood up, sliding her from his lap. She swiped at her face, picked up her plate, and followed him out the door, biting back the question of whether that gang of cut-throats should not instead be called a _murder_ , like crows.

After eating alone in the main room at the table, she decided to show off and make chicken pot pie. Her aunt had taught her how to properly mix a flaky butter dough, so she placed two sticks of butter in the freezer and checked on the other ingredients for preparation. She was aware of Andre’s gaze on her around the corner, even as he kept Bernard in sight in the side room.

From the other room, she could hear snippets of Locque’s questions for the men. They were being made to answer in front of all the others, so he ping-ponged from one man to another instead of finishing with each in turn, and asked the same question in various ways to expose any lies. He was very mild and businesslike about it, and as always his voice betrayed no expression. When she realized that Bernard had answered with an emphatic _No_ to an inquiry, she stole quietly toward the room to listen.

“But I may _require_ it,” Locque was saying. “I have a woman in the house. I may require that you give your life for hers. If I require it, then I expect it, and it is done without question.”

“Then you’re looking for another employee,” Bernard declared.

Locque asked without looking up from his papers—whatever papers they were, “You would not die for a woman? Not any woman? Not ever? Not even yours?”

“Fuck, no!” replied Bernard.

“Then you’re not a man,” Locque replied.

He shuffled his papers, ignoring the look that Bernard gave him. Katherine was sure that the Belgian was perfectly aware of the shock he had caused with his low, mild answer. The men gawked at the assassin. Locque finally grinned a little, and looked up at Bernard. “Must I explain why?”

“Be my guest,” replied a cynical Bernard.

Locque turned and bestowed on Katherine a wide smile, as if he and she shared a secret. “I must explain it to him.” He turned back to Bernard. “If you are not still an adolescent, then you must know that death walks beside a man, every day of his life, and puts out a hand finally, today, tomorrow, when you least expect it—and that’s _it_. And all the fucking money and power and luxury he has acquired is reduced to ashes. The _only_ thing a man has then is the feeling that he has for a woman, one who rouses his masculinity if he can find her, and finding her is half the battle.”

“All bitches are alike,” Bernard argued. “And they’re all becoming men now, anyway. Your view is old fashioned.”

“Listen to me. As a man, you do not heed what women do,” Locque argued. “No matter what they do, you are _always_ the man. You do not change in response to women when they change; you stay the same, you act the same, you treat them the same, and women will come back around to what they truly are. I don’t care if girls today shave their heads and wear strap-on dildoes—it’s a phase. And I’m not talking about work—poor women have always done hard labor, and rich women have always had careers. Privileged women have always been educated. Would men like you stop going to college—well, you’re too dim for college, but if you were to go, would you refuse to because more women are attending?” Locque kept on smiling at Bernard, whose eyes had taken on a stark light at being insulted. “That’s idiotic. No matter what happens, you remain the man, and you look for _The One_. I’m talking about a woman’s tenderness. Any man who is a man wants that.”

The men were listening silently, as if rapt, but Bernard did not look impressed. Katherine noticed that Andre kept his eyes on her. His attention unnerved her, then.

“And women are not all alike, Bernard. There are two kinds: the man’s woman, and the woman’s woman. A woman’s woman is, ironically, the hard one: no imagination, all conventionality—she wants a home that is better than all of her friends’ homes, she wants a baby and she throws the man out of her bed once it’s born, she wants to eat out every night and expects hubby to knuckle under to his superiors, live a life of drudgery, and swallow any bullshit the Man throws at him, because they have gaping mouths in their nest to feed. And for all of it, the ball-breaker then stalks off to tell her lazy, two-faced bitch friends what a lousy fucker her husband is. And that’s exactly the type of woman who’ll probably grab you by the balls, Bernard, you butt-ugly, motherfucking, worthless prick.”

Bernard turned red with anger, but the other men smiled at him. Katherine did not want to smile, but she could not keep her lips from turning up at the henchman’s comeuppance.

Locque flicked his eyes at Katherine. “Then, there is the man’s woman. Ironically, she has more warmth, and the ball-breakers stab her in the back. She understands men, and prefers their company and prefers friendships with female outcasts like herself. She can’t stand limits, labels, conventions, and wants adventure—she’s a romantic. Women like her want equality and equality with men was never a very popular idea. The feminist movement gives women an excuse for anything, because it has been taken over by the same back-biting, shrill, ball-breaking little cunts that the man’s woman cannot abide, which goes to show that some things never change about men or women. Are you getting this, sweetheart?” Locque tossed her way, and Katherine stiffened.

“What never changes is the fact that, when a man finally faces death, the only thing that makes it all worthwhile is the thought that there is a woman who lives, who makes him feel like a man and who is worth everything, even dying for, even if she doesn’t love him. Even if she fucking hates his guts, turns on him. He can stand all of the bullshit and the ugliness—because that’s all life is, Bernard, bullshit and ugliness, in our world and in the straight world, too—he can stand it if he knows that just one beautiful thing exists, and will live on after him. A real man wants to protect something and give something. A man does that simply because that is a man’s nature. I would not say that he is willing to die for her because he loves her—love is cheap. What is rare is when he _likes_ her. If you find a woman like that, it is the ultimate adventure and the ultimate source of fear, and you are truly alive and you have won, even if you have to die. Choosing how to die is a victory in itself—the final victory, in fact.”

Bernard did not look convinced.

“Or you’re an just empty shell,” Locque concluded with a nod to Bernard. “In which case you’re also afraid. You’re no different than the sap married to the ball-breaker, then. It’s all about fear, really.”

Bernard rolled his eyes. “Like I am afraid of anything! Even death.”

Locque turned back to his papers. “Then you, being unafraid of death, will die for the woman standing right there—” and he pointed at Katherine, “—or you do not have a man’s nature and you will not work with men. Every man is afraid of death, and every man wishes to find that one woman.”

“Not me,” Bernard boasted.

Locque just shook his head and returned to his papers. “Then it’s up to you if you are man enough to work for me. I don’t hire little girls.” That made Bernard look about as angry as she had ever seen a man. She wondered if Locque was trying to provoke the man into attacking him.

One of the other henchmen spoke up. “But Locque, people are saying that you killed the woman in your life who was _The One_. How does that fit with all that you’ve just said?”

Bernard turned to the speaker in obvious fascination, and the other men stared at him, too. Katherine, however, watched Locque, who kept looking at his papers. “Didn’t you kill her?” prodded the henchman.

“Is that what people say?” Locque asked without looking up. He sounded disinterested. “Because they also say that I am dead.”

“Did you?” Bernard also pressed, interested now.

Locque mocked him, “Want to hear all about it, do you?” Katherine saw his sidelong glance at her. “If you don’t understand dying for a woman, how can you understand killing—or dying with—a woman?”

She withdrew, smiling a little. Word had obviously gotten around about Locque’s stunt the other night, and he was right, it had worked; it did not matter that these men had not connected the story of her fake death with her personally. She wondered how he had also managed to plant the idea in their minds of her dead double being _The One_. That was a strange touch. Perhaps that was his way of boosting his coldblooded mystique. She smiled wider—of course, that was it. That would also explain all the die-for-her talk from him, when she did not believe a word of it. Emile Locque was not capable of loving anyone, nor of dying with or for a mere woman.

She wondered if word of her death would indeed reach her father, and had to admit that she enjoyed the thought of her parents believing it. She wondered if her father would suffer, would cry, or perhaps even call upon God for it not to be true. She wondered if her father ever really believed in God. If he did not, then he disbelieved in a completely different way that she did; she still believed that nature saw her actions and remembered them, and outed her wrongs as natural consequences, whereas her father acted as if he could treat God like a gumball machine and get away with everything. Perhaps he was no more capable of loving anyone than Locque was. Her mother might cry and mourn, though. Her brothers and sisters would for sure, and her aunt, and she wished that she could spare them that.

Since Locque was occupied, she walked quietly into the bedroom and took out another sheet of Bond’s stationery. All of the doors and windows were shut, but she remembered that the kitchen window, open this morning, looked out over a small dormer on the first floor. She wrote:

NO KILLING

PROMISE ME

Her note went into its envelope, and the envelope fit into the crack in the shutters when she shoved against them hard enough. _The One_ , she thought derisively. If anyone was making a chivalric gesture it was her, and Bond would probably misinterpret it, but she did not care what Bond thought of her. She was not warning Bond out of love for Locque, but unlike these two men she would also do nothing out of hatred. This war between them would end; she would end it.

#

That night, Katherine readied herself for bed earlier than usual, aware that Locque would make demands of her, demands that she decided to submit to, since they were pleasant and she was less afraid of him now. She got into bed and waited for him.

When the hour grew late and he still did not come to the bedroom, she got up again and stole silently into the front room in her bare feet, risking his anger so as not to make any noise. It was dark, but a single lamp was turned on in the side room and she leaned around the corner to peek at him. He was there, sitting in profile with his forehead leaned into his hand. His glasses were off and his open eye was bloodshot. His other hand rested beside him on the couch, touching a framed color photograph that, at least from where she stood, looked dusty. It was a photograph of a young woman, a blonde, long-haired woman. She was sure that it was the same smile from the stolen photo among her papers.

 _She was The One_ , Katherine realized.

He looked up suddenly, and turned her way. Katherine snatched her head back. “I saw you,” he said, and she ran as quietly as she could back to the bedroom. Shaking beneath the covers, she heard his approach. Without turning on a light he doffed his clothes and stood looking down at her, and she wondered if he was comparing her to that perfect woman that she would never be. He lay down and threw the sheets over his body. “You had better give me an explanation.”

“I was just wondering if you were all right.”

“I’m tired, you little pest,” he said nastily. He turned his back on her.

She reached out and gingerly laid her hand on the back of his neck. “Oh, fuck off for a while,” he snapped, but she pressed her fingers into the muscles. He did not move. She kneaded his neck and then moved upward, massaging his skull with both hands. He sighed at last and leaned into her fingers. She pressed her fingers deep into the muscles of his neck and his back, loosening them. _Tenderness_ , he had said. He had inadvertently given her a safeguard. Even the perfect blond could not care for him now.

“You’re not all right,” she said to add balm to the salve. “I didn’t mean to make you angry. Just go to sleep. I don’t want anything.”

Surely he was too clever not to see through this, but he turned to her and pressed his forehead against her neck, allowing her to continue to knead his muscles. Her fingers were tired, so she ran her hands over him instead, soothing the areas that were still taut. He drew her closer, so that her temple fit into the hollow of his shoulder. “Jesus H. Christ, you are a loveable thing, aren’t you?” he whispered into her hair. “Don’t mind me, poet—I’m just not used to anyone being nice, even a woman. Most of them despise me, but you don’t seem to. I never know what you are going to do from one moment to the next. You’re from the straight world, and I’ve forgotten those rules. You may as well be a goddamned extraterrestrial.”

Katherine was stunned. Oh, it did not require words after all, to be a cold reader! Men got turned off by a woman questioning them, and so she would not question him anymore. She did not have to. “I can imagine how it must be, when you are surrounded by ogres like that all the time.”

“I really, really hope that I don’t have to blow out Bernard’s brains. He is one that is truly capable, but he has a screw loose. It’s always a toss-up, hiring someone like him, but he is ruthless and that’s what I need right now.”

Now he was actually talking shop with her, and she did not know what to say.

“Stay away from Bernard,” Locque added. “Keep far away from all of them, except for Andre—but be careful even with him.” She nodded.

“So, you kept Bernard?”

“He decided to stay. Whatever his reasons are, I’ll figure out. I told Andre to keep an eye on him and a few of the other men told me that they would, too. I wouldn’t trust any of those gorillas if I were you, but most of us are not the heartless assholes that people like you think we are. Would that we were.”

“I don’t think you’re a heartless asshole,” she offered.

The chuckle started deep in his chest before she heard it. “No—I’m just an asshole! But that’s a sweet thing to say, preacher’s brat.”

He fell silent, staring up at the ceiling. Katherine drew in a deep breath. “Why don’t you ask James for help?”

“ _What?_ ” He sat up, jostling her from his shoulder. He looked angry, as at the time when he realized that his gun had been removed from the Lancia. She shrank a bit from him. “Are you _out of your mind?_ ”

“You’re frightened of something; I can tell.”

“Frightened! Try again,” he replied, and though he said it with his usual dismissal she did not believe it this time.

“You are.”

He contemplated her with narrowed eyes, the fingers of one hand balling into a fist and releasing close to his cheek. “Due to various men trying to assassinate me, you mean?”

“Due to Gogol, I mean. James knows who he is.”

His eyes did not look brown anymore; they flashed a steely blue. “Everybody knows who Gogol is, except for you, you little twit.” He threw himself back against the pillows and stared at the ceiling. “I know that you spoke to Bond at _Bayoumi’s_. Moreover, I know that you told him that I said he would never take me alive. Did he listen to you?” When she did not answer right away, he locked his gaze with hers.

She shook her head.

“Then shut up.” He slipped his hands behind his head. “Frightened. That’s a good one.”

She lay back too and turned her back on him. His hand gripped her shoulder and pulled until she turned to face him again. “What’s your game?”

“It was my impression that what I know was not up for negotiation.”

“It is not, and you had better tell me right now.”

“I don’t know anything, not really.”

“Don’t play me for a fool. Do you think I sent you shopping because you needed a makeover? You and Bond made plans. You stupid little girl, I set you up for that and you may as well tell me what everything, because I’m going to find out anyway—sooner or later.”

She opened her mouth and shut it, and the grip on her shoulder increased. “It’s just that James thinks that you work for this Gogol, but I don’t think you do.”

The grip increased. He glowered at her.

“James says that you could not have been bribing…Gonzalez? but paying him for a completed—”

“Oh, so sweet and docile when it suits you,” he scoffed. “You’re a liar like all the rest of them!”

His hand dropped from her and he turned onto his back and closed his eyes.


	16. Claus

She was having a nightmare. She could hear her own gasps and it frightened her all the more to hear the sound of her voice. She was by nature someone who pressed her lips tightly together and endured rather than pleaded or cried, but now she was moaning as well and it jolted her awake. She lay, tears streaming from her eyes, and felt Locque’s fingers wipe her face. “You said my name,” he whispered, and she could not tell if he was angry at her for this or not.

“I think it was that bug hunt again,” she replied, “except you got shot instead.” Her dream was already a jumble of color and violence that she could not replay.

His eyebrows raised. “You had a dream in which _I_ was shot?”

She didn’t answer right away. Dreams did not work the way that people assumed. In her dreams, people exchanged identities or even shared them. Seeing that henchman get shot by Andre had traumatized her; she knew it, even though she had not felt much of anything after it happened. Her dream had been that trauma, plus her own fear of dying, plus her natural horror of violence and cruelty, which she could not wish on anyone, and certainly a part of her dream had been sadness for her captor too, for he was older than his men and less inflexible, and she could not imagine that he would continue to dodge the inevitable too many more years. The thought of him stretched out cold and lifeless filled her with horror and grief. Moreover, it had been Jens’ voice that she had heard in her dream, saying Locque’s name as Locque fell to his knees with that wound in his chest. It was Jens’ voice, filled with pain, and the whole scene made anguish well up in her without her bidding. She felt a rush of rage, too, and disgust. “If you think that the thought of you dead makes me glad, then you have not found out anything about me at all, Master Inquisitor!”

His hand stopped her again when she tried to turn away from him. “I don’t expect that it would make you glad,” he replied softly. “By now I can tell which women are capable of that and which are not, you prison-hating do-gooder.” There was a trace of humor in his voice but it did not warm her. “What I don’t understand is how people like you exist, going about your daily drudgery without facing the realities of survival. Being poor—and everyone who is not rich is poor, including the middle class, because that’s all bullshit—being poor, you rely on governments to keep bloodshed far away from you, but laws can never eliminate the danger. Then someone breaks into your apartment, or grabs you off the street—” and his eyes laughed at her, “—and there you are, unprepared. No thanks to your government, who prevented you from preparing yourself by giving you a false sense of security.”

“I’m hip. How do I prepare, then?” she asked without much interest.

He scrutinized her a moment, then turned and soundlessly produced his gun. Katherine was startled, for she could not figure out where he had hidden it—certainly not in the drawer of the night table, and not under the mattress or anywhere just as foolish. He smiled at her expression. He always held his gun as if it were an integral part of him, but how he pushed it toward her. “Take it.”

She sat up quickly, but she laid both hands over her chest.

“Take it. It’s not going to bite you.”

“Aren’t you afraid that I would shoot you?”

“To do that you would first have to _take it_ , you idiot!” He was neither mocking her nor angry—he was just watching her closely again.

Tentatively, she reached out and touched it, and he tried to lower it into her hands, but she withdrew them again. She had expected the thing to feel alive, to buzz with power like the Avrocar, not to be this cold and such a dead weight. “I can’t! I don’t have it in me.”

He shook his head emphatically. “I’ve heard that before. And that is what I don’t get about people like you: you _do_ have it in you. You must! Once we were all little tribes without fire, walking around scavenging meat that other predators caught. We had to create weapons or die. And don’t give me that rot about subsisting on nuts and shoots, tree-hugger: gathering those requires too much work for little nutrition. Catching fish and rabbits in the woods does not provide enough bodily fat to survive a winter. We are carnivores, so we are killers.”

“We are omnivores,” she argued.

“Being at the top of the food chain, we—”

“We’re not at the top of the food chain. We’re second to the top. At the top are the carnivores who eat other carnivores: like wolves, vultures—”

His hand tightened on her shoulder—a little painfully, to remind her not to interrupt him. “That’s my educated girl. Now, let me finish: we _are_ at the top. We are carnivores that have to eat other carnivores, at least in a matter of speaking. We’ve eliminated almost every other natural threat to us, so humans prey on each other. And that is natural, too. It’s _nature_ , tree-hugger.” He lifted his finger authoritatively.

She shrugged, deciding not to press her objection.

“So this,” and he indicated his weapon, “naturally fits into my hand and stays there. It’s as natural to us as a stone flint, or a club. When I first gripped a gun I wondered how I had ever lived without it. It has always felt natural to me, yet it does not seem to come naturally to people like you. So perhaps there were always the warriors and the foragers, as long as humans have existed—I don’t know. Perhaps a book instead felt natural to you, from the beginning. But we don’t pass our tools on in our genes, so it must be a division that is basic, ancient, within human beings.

“But I tell you something, poet: your James Bond would lift his gun and tell you exactly the same thing, that it always felt natural to him, that he always knew what he was—a killer—just as I discovered for myself what I am. James Bond and I are very, very alike. I am not less human than he is!”

She asked, “Is that why you’re both filled with such hatred for each other? Because you’re alike?”

He shook his head. “I don’t hate Bond. This is not personal. I can’t afford to be full of hatred, like that Bernard—no one can. That’s what hair-triggers like him need to understand. I can count on one hand the number of people who I truly hate. And that’s also what I don’t understand about Bond—he can’t afford to get emotional. That’s not like me, and that’s not like him.”

“Well, James says that it is. Personal, I mean. He says that you deliberately killed a friend of his to bring him back into this fight, when he would have otherwise gone on thinking that you were dead.”

Locque, without releasing his gun, took her by the shoulders and pulled her close to him. He stared into her eyes and the silence grew—and grew. There was nothing she could do but to meet that gaze. At last, he let go of her. “He said that?”

She nodded, and he sat back against the pillows, checking his weapon. His jaw tensed. “What friend?” All she could do was shrug, and he turned back to his weapon, checking it and brooding. She sat looking at him, but he was shutting her out again, so she eventually lay down and closed her eyes.

#

The next day glowed with a fragile autumn warmth and the windows were open again. Moreover, Locque opened a door in the wall in the side room and revealed a hidden spiral staircase to the first floor. Katherine was allowed to descend it and sit on the veranda to eat her breakfast, and in fact, Locque actually sipped a cup of coffee beside her. He almost never seemed to eat or drink, but today he sampled her scrambled eggs as well. The grounds were beautiful with many trees, both deciduous and evergreen, and not much landscaping save a small lawn with a simple brick walkway that turned into a dirt path thick with pines. She had already observed that he employed no housekeeper, and that one of the duties of his new men was to cut the grass themselves.

Andre appeared, carrying his own cup. It prompted her to ask Locque if she should occasionally cook for all of the men. Andre brightened, but Locque did not look enthusiastic. “That’s really their job. I would not want to have to wean them from female cooking, although—” he added, “—several of my women chased them away from homemade meals with what they ‘cooked,’ and you might, too.”

“Well fine,” Katherine replied, insulted. “I’ll just make enough coffee in the morning so that when they scarf it, there’s still some left for _me_.”

“Her coffee is good; perhaps her meals would be, too,” Andre prompted hopefully.

“Do you know who was a good cook? Claus. Christ, I miss Claus. You would have liked him. I could say anything to him, talk to him about anything,” Locque told Andre. “He and I were inseparable when we worked for Kristatos. I don’t know how I could have tolerated the job without Claus at my side. He threw together our meals, and he was the kind of level-headed guy that got me through the insanity of working with those other morons, and I do mean morons.

“That ski jump fiasco had me livid—it was ludicrous to begin with, plus that oaf Kriegler, you know, picked the wrong side from which to aim at Bond, so Claus ended up in his sights—but Claus just laughed his ass off over it afterward. On the way up, in the elevator, with both of us were looking at Bond, he leaned over to me and asked: ‘Is this fucking stupid, what we are doing, or am I missing something?’ and I said, ‘Yes, it is fucking stupid to send Bond down the ski jump in the hopes that Kriegler will shoot him, and yes, it is stupid for you to go down beside him, but do it anyway, and yes you are missing the fact that our boss’s door swings both ways.”

Andre grinned. “What do you mean by that?”

“I mean,” Locque said with obvious pleasure, “that Kristatos swung between being an ineffectual wimp in love with a teeny-bopper to an egomaniacal, foaming-at-the mouth, grinning sadist who expected me to perform miracles because he could not simply pull a trigger and shoot James Bond.”

“What happened to Claus?”

Locque’s face changed into a mask of loathing. “He was harpooned in the back by Milos Columbo’s men. _In the back_.” He whirled to hurl his next words at Katherine. “He was shot in the back by the men employed by James Bond’s friend. That was _after_ Columbo sent his own girl into harm’s way to seduce Bond and pump him for information. And that was _before_ your James Bond killed the man that he thought was me by kicking his car—already halfway off a cliff, mind you—over the edge. Bond killed a man who was _unarmed_ , honey. All the poor fucker was doing was running away. Bond shot at him, the man lost control, went careening, and hung over the precipice. No gun in his car—I sure as shit never make that mistake. And Bond, without mercy, kicks his prisoner over that cliff. What do you think about that, sweetheart? What do you think about _that_?” He glowered at her, and she looked back at him in alarm at his change in mood.

“I think that James Bond is wrong about some things, and I told him so,” she managed to say. Her voice trembled, and Locque gave her a final scowl and turned away. He dismissed Andre, and after the henchman left she rose as well.

“Wait a minute,” said Locque harshly.

She sighed and stopped on her way to the staircase, still holding her plate and cup.

“Watch the attitude. Don’t huff like that. Come here and stand before me. I want to talk to you about a few things.” She did, her stomach falling to her feet. “Number one, I was surprised by your purchases; you bought more jewelry than I expected.”

“I did,” Katherine admitted, “but only because I don’t think I can wear diamonds. I bought some pearls, and gemstones—ruby, topaz—to match the outfits. And…to match me.”

“I see.” His expression relaxed somewhat and he noticed the garnet studs in her ears. “All right, then—keep an open mind about the diamonds, however. Second: you’ll notice I did not let you have your nails done.”

“I didn’t even think about that,” she answered honestly. “I’ve never had a manicure.”

A small smile crept onto his face. “Well, you’re not going to have one, because I’m going to need you to do some work around here.”

He watched her carefully, but she only shrugged and said, “All right.”

“Beginning now. I want you to go upstairs and make that bed. You make our bed every morning from now on. You’ll wash the sheets every week. You’ll wash my clothes, and yours. Apparently I don’t have to tell you to clean the dishes, or to care for your own clothes, hanging them up and so forth; I did have to instruct other women not to throw their clothes on the floor, resulting in a lot of theatrics.”

 _Well, that’s your fault for taking in spoilt, shallow gold-diggers_. “I’ll take care of everything,” Katherine said. He did not reply, but sat with that inscrutable look on his face. “I particularly like doing laundry,” she added to fill the silence. “I would always watch ‘Mystery’ while ironing at home.” There was a pause as she waited. He sat looking at her. “Was there anything else?”

“Put down those dishes and sit down,” he replied, patting the seat beside him.

She did, and quailed next to him, but he slipped an arm around her and looked down at her. “Tell me what that Bernard said.”

“He looked at me and said something like, ‘Locque must be getting desperate.’ This was when he was walking me to the car yesterday.”

He rolled his eyes with a shake of his head. “The next time that pig says anything like that again, you come straight to me and tell me about it, right away! Do you hear me? And that goes for all of them. In this house, or in the car, anywhere, if you have to speak to me in private, you tell me that instant, and I will send them out of earshot and listen to you. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t interject yourself again as you did yesterday, although I must say, you made them quake in their boots. Well done.”

Katherine replied, “I didn’t see any of them showing any fear.”

Locque smiled more widely. “Don’t play dumb. That ‘tattletail’ comment was inspired. Everyone knew who you meant, of course, but it also made them wonder why you held back, if you were possibly using Bernard to target another one of them. Those apes know that it does not matter who did what—what matters is who I _think_ did what, and you have my ear, plus they know that women lie, so they became paranoid. But then you did not lie—even better, for I will not tolerate that, plus it threw them off guard. Also, it demonstrated that you have backbone. It showed them that you did not require me to mete out punishment for an outright insult that would have sent other women into a frenzy, and in fact you treated the whole affair like the petty incident it was. Men like them are not used to women who don’t fly off the handle; they are used to strippers, whores, cocaine addicts…you know—flakes.” He lips brushed her temple. “You have them wondering, now. That’s good—but next time, tell me outright and let me handle it.”

“I will,” said Katherine, who wondered how men who knew all about killing and violence could not know about simple schoolyard teasing.

“One more thing. Because of our situation I will be forced, from time to time, to give these men the run of the house unsupervised. ‘Run of the house’ does not include our bedroom, your bathroom, or any of your personal items—if anything of yours is missing, you tell me right away, and I’ll stop what I am doing and call them to the carpet right then and there. If any one of them even starts down that hallway, you scream and yell. They know that the hallway is off limits.

“And if one of them lays a hand on you, you scream bloody murder. _Think of it in time_ , and do it. As long as you are in the house, I can hear you if you cry out. And that man will be a dead man, I promise you.

“I will kill him in front of all the others. Do you understand? I will send you out of earshot and do it before them. They all know this, too. I _will do it_ and I will make the rest of them watch it done. On your word alone. No one else touches my woman, ever. So, make your words to me true ones.”

Katherine nodded. “I would never lie about something like that!”

He leaned back to regard her with a hostile glint. “Oh, you would lie,” he contradicted, “if you willingly slept with one of them and I found out and questioned you. You’d lie to save your neck. Any woman would, but I would have kill the poor bastard just the same, to send the right message to the others. But, my poet, I would also have a special punishment for you in private, one that you would find very unpleasant. So, no secrets and no lies to me.

“And no running off with one of them if he promises to help you escape; he’ll help you right into a secluded area away from me where three or four of them can jump you at the same time. These men are jackals and none of them will help you out of the goodness of his heart, so don’t believe one word that they tell you…and no matter where you turn, all roads lead to me, one way or another. For as long as you are here, you are _mine_. Got it?”

She could only nod.

He shooed her upstairs, and she lost herself in her duties, which she truly did not mind performing. She had always enjoyed keeping a house, and it was unbelievable to now have everything that she needed to prepare a meal, without skimping on ingredients, and to have enough laundry soap without having to allot it like wartime rations. She finished the bed and his laundry while a couple of the men patched some mortar in the brick wall outside, and Locque cleaned and inspected his guns. The others patrolled the grounds; Bernard was nowhere to be seen.

Katherine opened the now-unlocked kitchen shutters to see that her envelope still lying on the dormer roof; with a stick and a piece of chewing gum, she secretly retrieved it before it could blow into the yard. “This is a good house,” she overheard one of the men in the main room tell another. “Locque keeps an orderly place. I prefer to work and be around men who work, and have a boss who makes his women do chores. At my last job, the men sat around and bitched, and drank, and starting fighting, and the boss’s lazy cum bucket sat on her ass and whined all the time.”

Katherine was aware that the two watched her now, so she concentrated on cutting the frozen hunks of butter into the flour while ignoring them. She was gathering the nerve to chide them for their language, for she could not very well go downstairs and tell Locque to do it when it was all she could do to keep from laughing. _Cum bucket_.

“And fucked all the henchmen, didn’t she? From what I heard.”

“Yes, but don’t look at me! I wouldn’t touch that cunt splat.”

“Please control your language around me!” Katherine snapped without looking up. Silence descended. The two continued cleaning their guns without speaking. Katherine smiled a little, but she regretted it; she had secretly wanted to hear more. Plus, if she ever got out of here and back to Brussels she was going to use the term _cunt splat_ in a sentence—with Benoit. It suited him perfectly. With the butter and water added to make a flexible dough, she rolled them into two balls and wrapped them to sit for a few hours in the refrigerator.

Locque came upstairs and said to the two men, “All right, out!” They immediately stood up and went downstairs. Katherine, wiping her hands, turned to him. He held out a hand to her. “Come take a walk with me before we lose the sun.”


	17. Shadow

“I need to wash my hands first,” Katherine pointed out.

He regarded her with a sly angling of his head, then reached out to seize her hand and pull her fingers against his tongue. “Ummmh! Buttery.”

“Ish!” Katherine yelped. He laughed as she yanked her hand from him. She washed her hands in the sink as he watched.

They walked, her with her hand on his arm, across the veranda and down the path through the trees until the house was out of sight. “Watching ‘Mystery,’ hm?” he asked. “Is that a North American program?”

“No—British. But it’s shown in the United States.”

“Well, I’ll have one of the men set up the television for you—I do have one—since you’ve been so cheerful about everything. Don’t think that I have not noticed. None of this has gone as expected,” he told her. “I usually spend more time playing with my girl instead of being a dull boy, but it’s necessary, so you’ve seen more of the offstage mechanics of my business than any other woman. I promise to be less boring from now on.” They came to a large stump and they sat; he pulled her onto his lap. “I have not forgotten about you; I wanted to tell you that.” He slipped his arms around her and lowered his face to kiss her.

“You don’t even like me!” Katherine said.

“What the—?” He pulled back and gawked at her.

“You only chose me because I’m easier to control than the others. I’m gauche, a hick, and at a complete disadvantage. And then you’re suspicious of me all the time as if I _were_ as manipulative as those other women were, and I’m not. You run circles around me trying to catch me doing something devious and I don’t even know what you’re talking about half the time. It’s not my fault if you’ve turned into butter.”

He began to laugh. She glared at him in disgust. “You?” he sniggered. “ _Easy to control?_ Poet, you have been nothing but trouble from the start! And I let you get away with murder! You are indulged, my girl.”

She lowered her head. “I’m nothing to you.”

His voice lowered to that predatory purr. “Oh, hardly nothing. No one else would have been allowed to interrupt a meeting, stomp around naked while I’m on the phone, give my staff lip in front of me, and make faces at me when I’m talking! Would I spend nearly every waking moment thinking about you if you meant nothing?” He gave her a little shake. “And another thing, girl: I have kissed you much more than any other woman I’ve been with. I usually find it repulsive, but you like it and I like it with you. You have such sweet little lips, and I love your tongue. I like a lot of things with you that I never enjoyed with others.”

“Especially picking on me.”

“Oh—oh!” He mourned teasingly. “Come here.” He folded her in his arms. “Rich little poor girl, picked on by me. ‘Turned into butter’—that’s a good one.” He lifted her chin and pressed his lips to hers. “See?”

Bond watched the two of them through field glasses, and his jaw tensed to see Locque assault Katherine with his mouth. Although, she did not seem to mind; she leaned against him when he was finished.

The hair on the back of his neck began to rise, and without looking around Bond lowered the glasses and listened. He definitely heard the rustle of a human gait in the brambles. Refusing to make the same mistake twice—the last time he pursued a person in a forest he had been discovered by Gonzalez’s men—Bond lowered himself to the ground and visually swept the foliage for legs. Looking up toward the sky, he spotted movement in the tops of the undergrowth.

“So this is how you sulk when I ignore you for one night,” Locque mused as he settled more comfortably on the stump. “I’ll remedy that.”

Unable to escape his grasp, Katherine lifted her chin. “It doesn’t matter. Like I told James, I don’t love you.”

His white teeth flashed. “And why in hell would you love me? No woman does. No woman ever will.”

He said it so easily that she was taken aback. “And you don’t mind?” she asked.

He lifted his eyebrows, but it communicated a shrug.

 _He’s lying_ , Katherine thought suddenly as she stared into his eyes. _He’s either lying_ _or he really doesn’t know something important about himself_. He wanted power over a woman; what greater power could he have than seeing her love him against her will? Surely he would revel in such a triumph. It kindled the beginning of a plan in her mind.

“Is it so important, that I like you?” he asked.

If he wanted to play games, she would play games, too. “Well, not in your ‘die for me’ sense!”

She did not expect him to blink at this, but he did. There was something odd that happened to his face whenever he looked blank—a light came into his eyes and he actually looked more animated, perhaps because his resting expression was one of studied disinterest. “Oh, you’re talking about what I said to Bernard. Do you—let me ask you something,” he said. “Can you recognize two contradictory statements made at different times from the same person? Even weeks or months apart?”

“Excuse me?” Katherine asked in confusion.

“Yes, you can.” He pointed at her in fascination. “ _My mother did that_. It drove my father insane because he could not do it, and naturally I tried to imitate her, but I could only achieve it through studied self-training. But she naturally recognized a contradiction, immediately, without looking for it—just as you just did.”

“So…you’re telling me that you like me because I’m like your mother?” Katherine asked in disbelief.

He shook his head, smiling now. “No, Freud. You are quite different from her; in fact, you are different from every other woman I have ever known. But I have discovered one thing about you that is not completely unfamiliar.”

“Oh, so what you’re saying is that you don’t understand me much at all. Well, I think that I am perfectly understandable, normal, and ordinary.”

“There is nothing ordinary about you. Stop thinking that about yourself. If anything, the other women in my life were the ordinary ones. Now, I want to finish what I was going to ask you.”

She signed irritably, then caught herself and straightened. He chuckled and waved a hand at the villa. “If you could live wherever you wanted, where would that be?”

Katherine looked at him, unable to fathom what he was up to now. “I would live in Old Faithful Inn, on that top floor that is closed off to the public, like a ghost. Or in the Robie House—Frank Lloyd Wright, you know? Or in a pirate ship anchored illegally in the Galapagos Islands.”

“I’m being serious, you little wag! I had Andre do some checking on your accounts. You handled your stolen loot very well, but you’re never going to make more than a starvation wage. If you were to receive wealth, you would most likely not squander it, in my opinion.”

Katherine was silent.

“What about this villa? Do you like it at all?”

She stared numbly at it. “If I received it as a gift, I would have to pay hefty taxes on it.”

“True.”

“But I could open up the bottom half as a rental, then shut myself into the upper apartment at night, and never be kidnapped again!”

He shook his head. “You were not kidnapped from that hovel in which you were living, you twit. I snatched you from your work, and you would still have to work. Remember what I told you last night about being prepared.”

“I would hawk those diamonds. If I were given them as well, I mean.”

“Have them properly appraised, first. I can give you the name of a man.”

Enjoying herself a little, she pressed on: “Then I could buy your father’s estate out from under him, rent it out, and live in that carriage house!”

“You could never afford that estate,” Locque told her, “but I would enjoy seeing you pull the rug out from under that bastard if you could. So, you like the carriage house.” He was looking at her strangely. “I always did, too. My mother knew it.”

“With the money from the rent or the sale of the villa I _could_ buy a small ship and anchor it in the Galapagos, and I _could_ visit Old Faithful Inn, and even work at Yellowstone Park.”

“You could, poet,” he replied in a voice that was suddenly gentle. “There are a lot of things that you could do, and would, and I would rather that you did them instead of some whore shoveling all of my assets up her nose.”

“So, once you receive your mysterious assignment, you are not coming back here again?”

“No, indeed. I am never coming back.”

It stunned her that he was actually considering passing property on to her. “Why are you in this profession?” she demanded. “You’re too intelligent to hang around the men that you do. They are misfits, but you could be anything that you want. You don’t value what they value, you don’t like what they like—”

He shrugged. “Why are you trying to become a librarian, instead of a corporate executive? You have the brains for it, and certainly the discipline and the organization. But you don’t fulfill your potential because the thought of power over others sours your gut. I know your type. Power over others is something that I have a distinct talent for, but only in this profession can my power be absolute, as I want it to be.

“Of course I am too intelligent for this! Criminals are, for the most part, stupid—but most people are stupid, poet. You’re going to find out that most librarians are stupid, too.”

She bit her tongue.

“Most people are mediocre. You are not. And do not forget that you are a criminal, as well.” He pulled her against him again. “Pirate ship! I don’t doubt it—with you swabbing your own deck as well. The last woman I made wash my clothes let out a snivel that sounded like I was torturing her.” He lowered his lips to hers again. “Now, do you begin to understand why I needed to find one more girl, that singular girl?”

She remembered her plan.

“I think,” she put in, “that the most important thing in life, at least for me, is to love a man and be loved by him.”

His lips turned upward just slightly. These small gestures, with his mouth and his eyebrows, animated his face and made him almost approachable. “And not a career?”

“I want a career, but I don’t want it to become all that I am. I just want to find work that I can stand to do every day. If I really could earn a living by writing, I would prefer to do that. But love is most important to me.”

“That is good. That shows that you have not forgotten how to be a woman,” he replied. “Many women have. You still have a woman’s heart. If women lose what makes them most interesting to men, men will stop wanting women, and life would not be worth living.”

She proceeded carefully, following the idea that was forming of how to manipulate him. “I think that men have already stopped wanting me.”

“How can you say that?” he demanded. “I have a house full of men who are seething with curiosity to find out who you really are. What about me? I have told you repeatedly that I want you!”

“But when you’re gone, I’m afraid that there will be no one else. I’ll be alone from then on, and love will pass me by.”

Locque tilted his head, at it seemed to Katherine that he was really looking at her now. “What makes you think that that would ever happen to you?”

She did not answer. When she lowered her head, he did not take her chin in his hand as usual. He pulled her against him instead, his lips brushing her hair. “No,” he said. “That would never happen, sweet.” When she still did not reply, he tightened his arms.

Bernard came sauntering through the forest, carrying some grocery bags. “Hey, twat,” Locque said to him. The look that Bernard turned and gave the assassin was one of murderous rage. Locque smiled back easily, but Katherine cringed in his arms. “My girl would like a drink. Go into the house right now and mix one for her. She wants a—” He turned to Katherine.

It was not even noon, but Katherine fought to think of the most complicated drink that she knew. “I want an Old Fashioned in a sugared glass. With a cherry. And an orange slice.” She smiled at the ugly face that Bernard gave her, but her stomach curdled.

“Normal women want a Bloody Mary or a Mimosa at this time of day, you dried up bint,” said Bernard without any pretense of charm.

Locque pushed Katherine off of him and rose with a look on his face that said, _I’ve been waiting for this_ , and Bernard’s face said the same thing as he turned to face Locque. Katherine, however, shot back smoothly: “What’s the matter, peckerwood—you never gave a bint an old fashioned ‘morning delight?’”

Bernard flushed a deep red and stomped off.

Locque pushed Katherine to the ground, and she, laughing merrily, landed on the grass. He straddled her and gave her face small, painless slaps while she covered her head with her arms. “Do you ever shut the fuck up? I was ready to sack his ass right then and there!” He did not seem angry, however; he sounded amused.

“I thought of it in time!” Katherine crowed triumphantly.

Continuing slowly through the undergrowth, Bond drew his gun. The figure of a man stood up at last in front of him, and even though his back was to the agent Bond recognized him as one of the employees of Qasim Bayoumi, a henchman who had been shadowing Katherine as she shopped in the store. Taking position behind a tree, the man lifted a rifle—not a handgun, but a rifle, not sniper grade but still meant for a precision shot. The man aimed, and waited; Bond lifted his PPK and waited as well.

Katherine hopped onto the stump, while Bernard stood holding her drink and glowering at her. Locque watched her and ignored Bernard, who was growing impatient. “Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind,” Katherine improvised,” to suffer the Limes and Soda of outrageous Cocktails, or to take Crackers against a Brunch of Hangovers, and by eating end them…”

“Wasn’t there something in _Hamlet_ about a poisoned drink?” Locque suddenly asked. He looked as if he were addressing the glass, and not Bernard. Bernard pushed the glass toward Locque just as Locque turned away again.

“No, it was a weak one,” Andre quipped from somewhere in the brambles. Katherine had no idea that he was near. Locque turned to the sound of his voice in amusement. “A watery gin and tonic, I believe. Someone poured it in the queen’s ear.”

“The queen’s _ear_ , eh?” asked Locque.

“Perchance to scream! To scream, and scream again!” Katherine blatted. “For ice cream. Did you put ice cream in my Brandy Alexander, Bernard?”

“You did not order one,” replied a prosaic Bernard.

“No, I ordered a lemon vodka. All the world’s a bar!”

She turned away to do a little dance on the stump, but the sound of the glass thumping on the ground startled her. She turned back in confusion and stared at the muzzle of the gun that Bernard was aiming in her direction. The muzzle itself was small, but like a black hole it bent everything around it into a swirl into which she also fell, simultaneously numb and terrified to realize that Bernard was about to kill her.

Everything happened exceedingly fast and with agonizing slowness. The bullet whizzed smartly past Katherine to plant itself in the chest of the man who had aimed a rifle from behind a distant tree. Locque yanked Katherine by the arm to the ground and rolled with her so that they were both shielded by the stump, he on top of her. Andre and Bernard were running toward the body that now lay some feet away from the rifle.

Locque’s men descended from every direction, sweeping the area for other intruders. Only when one of them reported that no one else was on the grounds did Locque lift his body from Katherine’s. “Get her safely to the house,” he told one of them, who stepped forward quickly to shield her, now having full permission to grasp her arms as he pulled her with him to the building. Locque stood up and watched the two of them cross the veranda. Then he walked over to see the body for himself.

“The man was shot in the back before I hit him, or at the same time,” Bernard observed as he holstered his weapon. “I’m not sure what I saw first, his movement, or the flash from the other gun.”

“Good eye either way, Bernard,” Andre told him.

“Fuck!” Locque yelled. Besides him, only Andre recognized the face—the man who had held the gun on Katherine in the parking garage, the partner of the now-dead Mark.

“He was aiming right for the woman’s head,” Bernard observed. “That much, I did see. He was not aiming at you, Locque. You were meters away. This whoreson was going to kill _her_.”

Locque shoved the body with his foot. “You two get rid of it quickly. Don’t let her see it.”

“I’ll bring the car around,” Bernard said, and turned to go. Both Andre and Locque watched him walk away. It was not lost on either of them how this man was now all business, neither lackadaisical nor overexcited, how he had reacted quickly to try to save Katherine without mockery or internal debate.

Andre nodded. “You were right, after all. He’s the type of man you want at your side in a war.”

“I was wrong.” Locque turned to look at Andre, and it was a sober look. “I should not have to need such a man. I should have been more careful. This is a failure on my part!” he said, and his anguished voice riveted the henchman. “I have fucked up. I have fucked up royally. Shits like Kristatos can put their women in danger, but not me! Never me. Even _she_ chided me for letting this bastard go!”

He left the yard to find Katherine, and Andre quickly stooped to grab the dead man’s feet.


	18. Angel

Katherine was combing her hair at the bedroom vanity when Locque entered the room. He paused, but she did not seem upset. “Are you all right?” he asked.

“I never know what is going on,” she murmured. Without looking around, she caught his eye in the mirror. “Did I hear a gunshot besides Bernard’s?”

“Yes, an intruder was lurking in the woods. He’s gone, but we must truly be on our guard from now on.”

“That’s a change,” she huffed. “He’s gone?”

Locque nodded. “A goner.”

“Oh, I see. Naturally.”

She was sounding remote again, so he went to her. To see what her reaction would be, he knelt on one knee at her side, placed a hand on hers, and looked up at her. Her glare of utter suspicion brought a small smile to his face as he stood again. “How unromantic you are, poet!”

“I don’t feel very well, and I’m in no mood for your games.”

“Why, what is wrong?”

She did not answer. She stood up and glanced helplessly at the bed. “Now that I’ve fixed my hair, I want to lie down for a while.”

He nodded. “Do that. I shall join you in a moment.”

She casually dropped her skirt and started toward the bed.

“Marvelous,” he added, startling a small smile from her.

He left the bedroom and waited at the table for Andre, who finally arrived, freshly washed and carrying a large sealed blue envelope. Their eyes met, and Andre nodded. Locque motioned for the henchman to remain while he opened it and read the three sheets of paper within. Neither of them saw that Katherine, in her robe, had crept to the bedroom door and was watching intently. “Is it—what you expected?” Andre asked.

Locque was scowling. “It’s not _worse_.” He folded and stuffed two of the papers back into the enclosure and rose, shoving the third into his breast pocket.

“When?” asked the henchman as Locque walked across the room and pressed a button in the wall beside a row of coat hooks. The mount sprang open like a door, revealing a combination lock to a safe. Locque shrugged and turned the tumbler, and opened the safe.

“I have some time. I must wait for the final word. What’s ironic is, _she_ speaks the language, and I do not!”

“The Middle East?”

Locque placed the envelope inside the safe, then turned abruptly and saw Katherine, who stepped forward. For her benefit, Locque reached inside the safe again, withdrew some papers, and lifted them in her direction. “My will, you little spy. You get the combination to this safe after I am gone.”

 _A goner_? Katherine suddenly wondered. Locque’s expression darkened, as if he knew what she was thinking. “I want to put something in there, too,” she said quickly. “May I have a piece of paper and a pen?” There never seemed to be any writing utensils in sight. Locque paused, then shrugged again, and it was Andre who retrieved them for her.

Katherine went to the table and wrote:

 _Upon my death, all of my property, including my letters, any valuables, and land, shall go to my aunt, Suzanne Clara Williams, 12579 Seminole Street, Lawrence, Kansas_.

“I want the two of you to sign this,” she added. She handed it and the pen to Andre, who scrawled his name then handed it to Locque, who signed it, then laid it in the safe and shut the door. Katherine watched as he reset the tumbler. “That is not legally binding,” said Andre.

“It shows her intent, plus it was witnessed, so under the circumstances it will be treated as such,” Locque replied. “It’s a wise precaution, since her name is already on the diamond certificates and on the deed. And on the registration of my repaired Lancia.” He saw that Katherine blanched to hear this. So, she had not believed him earlier?

“All done. Now, go back to the bedroom like a good girl,” he told her. “I will be with you directly. And Bernard is right outside the windows, so don’t worry, but keep the lights out.”

“I don’t know if I like the sound of that,” said Katherine.

“Bernard is a crack shot, you must admit it,” Andre put in.

“Bernard would never have shot to protect _me_ ,” she told the men as she rolled her eyes.

Without comment, Locque watched her go, then retrieved his phone.

#

Bond was just settling down onto the hotel bed for a quick nap when the phone rang: two short rings, a pause, then two more—a signal from the Lotus that M was on the car’s line. The Lotus tapped into the phone of any hotel room or suite that Bond rented to alert him. Bond quickly left the room for the car.

Behind the wheel, he lifted the receiver. “M—at last!”

“Not ‘M,’ Bond—L,” said a deep voice. Bond frowned to recognize it. “I’m sorry to surprise you like this, but this also blows part of my cover,” said Locque. “I know many things about your security.”

“That is evident,” Bond snarled.

“It should also be evident to you by now that Qasim Bayoumi has become involved in our business.”

“Bayoumi has blood on his hands, or could have, had I not been there this morning,” Bond replied.

“Yes. I know it. I told you earlier that we could both keep our lives. We could still do that but lose Katherine’s unless you and I talk.”

“Today. This afternoon,” Bond instructed. “At the Hallerbos Museum, on the terrace, at two o’clock. And this time, both you and I will be armed.”

“I am _always_ armed, Bond. But I agree to your terms; Bayoumi is no friend to either of us. The enemy of my enemy,” Locque added, “is my enemy.”

“Yes. We understand each other, and the situation,” Bond told him. “I’ll be waiting there for you.” He hung up.

#

 _So_ , thought Katherine, _I was right_. Master Inquisitor had a weak spot: he believed in the Victorian, sentimental concept of the “Angel in the House,” the softness and domesticity offered by a genuine woman as a shield against the cold world of commerce—or in this case, crime. He needed a moon to revolve around him and cast a gentler light, and to occasionally eclipse reality’s harsh sun. He was a hard man but he lacked the more terrifying qualities that distinguished the sociopath: hatred of women, especially of his mother; cruelty to animals; sexual dysfunction; alcoholism or gambling; impulsiveness; a parasitic dependence on his father or on his wealth; or contempt for anyone who sought to understand him.

He did not seem to hate women; he was a chauvinist and very arrogant, but also affectionate and even compromising. Her cheeks warmed when she remembered how, on the first night in response to her shy question, he had told her, “I don’t kiss much, but I’ll do as much of anything else that you want.” Now, he kissed her often. (She had told him then that she only wanted him to leave her alone, and he had replied snakily, “No, you don’t!”) She remembered how he had stroked the stray cats on the bed that he shared with her in the carriage house, and wondered how often those cats had been his companions when he lived there. She seemed to remember Professor Verstraeten mentioning something about his best pupil’s love for animals. If anything, her attempts at understanding Locque were rewarded, her opinions sought, and she knew that if he harmed animals there was no way that she could feel any pleasure with him, ever.

He sought tenderness but because of his social class and the mystery of his fiancé he had previously kidnapped shallow girls, opportunists, useless women who were more likely to have crossed his path. The dresses in the closet told the story, and as time went by and he matured he sought out more varied victims, until he had at last stumbled upon her, the daredevil and the empath. He had a measure of empathy, himself; he did not lack insight, though he neglected to use his honed scalpel on his own psyche. Did he snatch women out of his conviction that no woman would ever want him for himself? Perhaps, if she welcomed him and convinced him that she was falling for him, he would soften, even melt. Perhaps if she, the cold reader, tempted him to close his eyes even for a moment, she could escape, and if she could not escape, she could at least enjoy a little power over him for a change. The idea stirred her. It excited her even as a voice at the back of her head intoned a warning.

When Locque returned to the bedroom, she moved close to his side of the bed and, after watching him undress, stretched up her arms to him. His eyes glinted with surprise and suspicion, but they unfocused at her touch. “I’m all right if you don’t look at my face,” he said.

“Why? Your face is very handsome.”

“I was better looking when I was younger. I was naturally blond once, believe it or not. As I get older it takes more of an effort not to look like a dentist.”

“I like the way that you look now,” Katherine insisted. “You’re interesting. I preferred how you appeared when you showed up in the library like a professor to how you appeared when you were that playboy in the street.”

“Really?” Locque asked, genuinely surprised. “That is my lady killer look.”

“It’s the truth. Actually, I was a little depressed that day, at the library… I was even wondering if I should have accepted your offer. I didn’t expect to see you again. It was close to the holiday and I was little lonely.”

“Poor sweet. Your eyes did look a bit red that day.”

“Then _you_ showed up. I did not connect the two of you—I still can’t. You were grave and mysterious, and I was hoping that you would make a move. Well,” she added, the blood creeping cooperatively to her face, “be careful what you wish for.”

“Who winds your doll-key, poet?” he teased her.

“You do, ‘Don’t-Know-It,’” she replied. He chuckled at that worn-out rhyme. She was both child and woman. There were some natural women left in the world.

 _To hell with the game_ , he thought. He interlaced his fingers with hers and gazed deeply into her eyes. They came together very slowly and gently, while Bernard’s shadow paced back and forth, darkening the windows.


	19. Free Reign

They napped, briefly, before Locque automatically started awake and glanced at the clock. He relaxed, and his hands quieted Katherine as she shifted in protest against waking. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Go back to sleep,” he told her. “Everything is all right.”

Her disobedient eyes opened, and narrowed.

“I won’t let anything happen to you,” he told her.

She settled against him again, but her eyes remained open. He put his lips close to her ear. “Tell me something: when I was twenty years old, how old were you?”

She shrugged. “Well, how old are you now?”

“Thirty-eight.”

“Then I was eleven.”

“Jesus H.,” Locque murmured, and kissed her nape.

“So…tell _me_ something. Where would _you_ live, if you could live anywhere that you wanted?”

“I am living exactly where I want.” Locque smiled down at her.

“Oh, yeah? Enjoy being a target on an arcade shoot, do you?”

“I keep forgetting that this life is new to you,” he remarked. “It wasn’t to most of my women—they were used to the company of men like me, with the risks,” and he gave her a smarmy grin, “and the rewards.”

She rewarded him with that sardonic expression that he had come to enjoy. “I was sure that you would say that you’d want to be Early Man, _Homo habilis_ with his bone blades, a nomad on the savanna—free.”

“Well, there is something to that,” he replied, “although you’re more of a nomad than I am. I like my creature comforts. However, I have lived very sparingly, and could again.”

“While on the lam?”

“Yes, my poet.” 

“And that’s where you’re going, isn’t it?” she pressed him. “You’re so generously leaving me everything, and taking off! Perhaps with a new face, a new identity—and the hounds that are after you will come snapping at my rear end!”

He shook his head at her. “No, my sweet! When I am gone, you shall be free of my world. I am going to a job. I have an assignment, from a big organization. You would simply _die_ if you knew who it is.”

There was something that went dead in his eyes whenever he talked about it. She did not want to let her imagination get the best of her, but it seemed to be dread.

“Your James would die, too,” he added to bring that sardonic look back to her face. “He’ll never guess, either. Bond would be beside himself with _envy_.”

With an effort she avoided taking the bait. “So, your superiors have names that I would recognize? Is it the Riddler, the Joker, or Catwoman?”

“You are Catwoman!” Locque told her.

“All right, Riddler,” she replied, a little deflated but determined to score her point. “I want to ask you another question: if I asked you to give all this up and run away together, would you?”

Locque burst out laughing, baring those white teeth. “We-e-ell! I did not expect this, from you!” He sat up to look down at her. “ You mean it as a joke, but I have been asked that by other women, you know. They were sincerely asking.” She did not know what to say, and he sat there chuckling at her. “The answer is, No. Much as I would like to. And someday you will thank me for that.”

“You don’t want a home?” she asked, out of ideas now.

He shrugged, and lay back down again to stare at the ceiling. “Of course I want a home. All men want a home, some kind of home—even Bernard. But they don’t know how to get it, or keep it, or they don’t know how to be happy in it once they do have it.”

“Well, that sums up most of the human race,” Katherine remarked.

“Why are people so ungrateful?” Locque demanded. “I mean, people more like you—in the straight world. They have nice homes, nice lives, they went to the trouble to marrying each other—and they’re bitter! They’re nothing like your _Homo habilis_ on the savanna.”

“We don’t know that,” Katherine objected. “Maybe _habilis_ men and women bitched about each other then, too. We don’t know that they were any more noble than we are. I doubt it, in fact.”

Locque continued, a smile playing on his lips: “You must admit that people are more selfish, more whining, these days. Not that I care for a nice existence or for a wife, particularly…”

“It’s the same complaint throughout history. Bourgeois life is empty. It’s in literature: Madame Bovary. Marianne Dashwood. And especially the surrealists—André Breton’s parents had a terrible marriage. Many of them had childhoods that were downright horrific—much worse than mine. Perhaps like yours.”

Locque grimaced. “Don’t fall into that ‘It was his upbringing’ trap. My childhood was largely trouble-free. Hell, most of my life has been.”

“Then why are _you_ ungrateful?” Katherine pressed. When he turned his head to glare at her, she added, “Why did you kick everything that you had in the teeth? It’s despair, isn’t it, the way that you live?”

To her surprise, he suddenly smiled—humanly, without malice. “You’re still quite young, poet,” he answered. “No, it is not despair. You have no idea how exciting times were back then. It was still a largely undiscovered world, back in the early sixties. It was easier to break into the business, and I rose very quickly, being that I was close-mouthed and deliberate, even while young. Disciplined—like you. Principled. That gives one the advantage, no matter where one is.

“It was very exciting, and easier, back then. I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Believe it or not, many of those dresses in that closet belonged to willing guests. Then, during the late seventies, something changed—the business became uglier, dirtier. Cheaper. I started turning down jobs: plane hijackings, for fuck’s sake. The PLO can jolly well expend its own people for that filth, and do. True believers!” He shoved a hand at the word. “I’ll never work for them, or for the Popular Front or any group of fanatics like that. No matter what I have done, I’ve never shot an old man in the head and dumped his body on the tarmac. I will not strap on a bomb, or point a gun at Pakistani diplomats or at stupid Israelis on holiday—what did those bastards take me for? Someone desperate? Fuck the Popular Front.

“Everything became political, that’s the problem. Like I’m going to participate in Charles de Gaulle’s assassination! That offer came with a lot of money, mind you—and it would have destabilized a neighboring country. That’s too big a price to pay for the honor. No, I prefer less, not more, political upheaval in the world. And religious causes are even worse. No, thank you.

“There simply became less use for me, that is what happened. I’m a surgeon, and more and more bosses are looking for butchers, because more bosses are mere thugs with money. No class anymore. And the women changed, too. I found myself feeling only contempt for the kind of woman who sought me out. Now they are easy, no inhibitions at all, which pleases that pack of wolves downstairs, but not me. And they have become as tawdry and as boring as the men. What I want, I want to pursue; I don’t want it pursuing me.

“And soon, the salad days will be over for Bond, too,” he continued, and saw the look of confusion on Katherine’s face. “The Mob is dying, drugs are becoming cheaper and more synthetic, and smuggling won’t be necessary anymore as more men make them from innocuous chemicals. Everyone will get into drugs then—which means fewer great men, and more faceless expendable losers such as the ones that I am forced to hire. Gambling will be legal in the United States at last, and everyone will get into that, too. Perhaps your country will even legalize drugs, and prostitution. Plus, there will be more political and religious crap—Bond won’t enjoy hunting down puritanical terrorists who live in tents with no luxuries, no liquor, and no women. He prefers the life that I do: hanging around casinos, flying to Madrid or Cortina, rubbing elbows with well spoken men in suits and with beautiful ladies, rousting high class criminals. That way of work is fast disappearing.”

“You sound like you are preparing to get out,” Katherine remarked.

“I _was_ out, or almost. Some things are beyond my control, and now I must get through what is to come. I was so close. It’s too bad,” he added ruefully. “But I’ll outsmart them. I’ll get out of this mess, too.”

“You don’t like your…your present employer?”

He did not reply, but merely sat up and stretched. He threw off the covers and reached for his pants. “I thought I heard a promise that you would stick around,” Katherine grumbled.

Locque sighed deeply, uncharacteristic of him. “Oh, woman.” He passed a hand over his eyes. “The last thing I want to do is get out of a bed with you in it. But, I’ve decided to take your advice and talk to Bond. I must go to meet him.” He stood up.

“You’ve decided to take _my_ advice?”

He threw her a wicked smile. She watched him as he dressed. It was a strange combination, his sensual lips, his professor’s glasses, that tousled copper hair, and his thuggish black jacket. “Where are my gloves?” he asked.

Katherine flung an arm toward a distant chair. “Maybe under that rag.”

“You did not hang this up?” he asked in disbelief to see the sable wrap tossed so carelessly. He walked toward it.

“I’ve run out of hangers in the closet. Besides, why?”

Locque lifted the fur and idly retrieved a cloth tag that fell out of it. “I was rather hoping that you would model this and nothing else for me.” He glanced at the slip.

> _Don’t use Bond’s stationery. Just tell Locque what I told you. It will soon be over._
> 
> _Thank you for this afternoon. I know you’re only doing this to get away from him, but you are full of surprises! -Qas._

“It’s my horse-riding habit,” she teased when Locque paused, seemingly lost in thought. He crumpled a piece of cloth in his hand and pulled on a black pair of gloves. Fully dressed, he turned to her with that expressionless gaze. “How do you know that Bond is going to meet you?” she asked.

“How do I know that Bond is going to meet me.” He reached out and grasped her ankle, and pulled her so that her head slid down the pillows and onto the mattress. “Because I spoke to him, you little twit!”

Her heart was beating fast, but she could not put a finger on why. She scrambled to sit up. “But this Gogol is playing you and he against each other, I’m certain!”

“That would not surprise me,” Locque grunted. “Perhaps Gogol killed this friend of Bond’s, whose murder Bond blames on me, to get him riled.”

Something added up in Katherine’s memory. “But it’s not only Gogol that scares me. I just thought of it now. It’s something that Qasim said—not what I was going to tell you in exchange for letting me go, but something incidental…”

“Everything that pimp says is incidental, including what you were going to tell me as a bribe,” Locque sneered. He yanked on his shoes in anger, irked that she would bring this up again, now, after their pleasant late morning interlude. Her shoulders sagged, and she let out another prohibited sigh. “Oh, get it off your chest, then!” Impatiently, he looked at his watch.

“Don’t go,” she said. “Don’t do it.” At his inquisitive look, she added, “It did not make sense, but he said something like, ‘Britain, the U.S., and Belgium will be riding camels.’ That is obviously a reference to the three of us.”

Locque shook his head. “It’s a common Saudi saying, you idiot. ‘My father drove a camel. I, his son, drive a car. My son flies a plane. His son will be driving a camel.’ It’s a reference to the impermanence of the oil reserves, to the fatalism of Arabs, and to the fact that the western nations will lose their standard of living when OPEC takes a dive. And it’s a reference to him. Qasim lives in Belgium, and does a lot of business with, naturally, Great Britain and the United States. He’s in oil, so that’s not surprising.”

Katherine insisted, “You’re walking into a trap!”

“Of course I am walking into a trap!” Locque snapped. “Every situation into which I walk is a trap. I know how to get out of traps, my dear—that’s my job. This life is full of traps. Every conversation that I have, with anyone, is a trap. And every pleasant entanglement I have had with a woman, every single one, has been a trap. Thank you for reminding me, doll. Now, shut _your_ trap.” He turned to go.

“Wait!” she said, rising to her knees. When he did not respond, she called out, “Emile!”

He paused, his hand on the bedroom door. He could be so absolutely still. He had a preternatural stillness that was more frightening than any male behavior that had previously scared her. Only the tensed set of his jaw revealed his anger. “There are some rules,” he said, and his voice was gravely and low, “for which you only receive one warning. I gave you that warning.”

Katherine’s heart was flip-flopping despite her efforts to tell herself that he was more bark than bite, but she managed to get her words out. “And I give you this warning: Gogol is after both of you, and Bayoumi is after both of you. Maybe Bayoumi and Gogol are after each other, through the two of you.”

Locque turned very slowly to look at her. He smiled a little, looking at the earnest little actress on the bed. “Well, why don’t you tell me now what you were going to say in the car?”

Katherine, encouraged, brightened. It was a scene that he had played out before, the woman lying to him from their bed, and it disappointed him. “Bayoumi said—remember, I’m translating: ‘It’s the forger who’s holding the reins, and as long as I’m on his good side, neither Bond nor Locque will get a clear shot at each other until the dove loses the Bull of Heaven. Beware the levelheaded when he is angry’—and _that_ is an Arabic saying that I recognize.”

Locque’s smile widened, as it often did when he was furious. What a fool she was to quote a proverb that _she_ should heed. The dove. So, Qasim was resurrecting the symbol that Kristatos had used to implicate him in Ferrara’s murder.

“It’s gibberish,” he said, “poetic Arab nonsense, quoted only to impress the girls, just like the surrealist nonsense he invoked to flatter you that same night. First he offered you jewels and furs; then, seeing that you are a stupid intellectual, he offered you poetic trinkets, and the latter are just as worthless as the former, therefore proving that you can be sweet-talked, like any other woman.” He opened the door. “‘Do good to people and you enslave their hearts.’ That is an Arabic saying, too. Do you know it? Of course you do, my little do-gooder.”

Katherine looked dismayed, not insulted. Well, that fit her little act as well. “But—”

“I’ll see you later,” he told her pleasantly, and shut the door behind him. He stalked down the hall to the door. Assuming that he later made it back in one piece, and he had every intention of doing so, he would send his fist into that pretty little face.

That. Little. Bitch!

Well, at least he now knew how Katherine expected Bayoumi to come at him, what he had told her. She was probably rushing a secret communiqué to him right now, telling him that their ruse had worked. It could be as simple as turning on the light and blocking out part of the window with a cloth. What Bayoumi would actually do was anyone’s guess, but either way Locque needed to revise his plans.

Locque ground his heel against the concrete with each step down to the underground garage, thinking of her bullshit performance this afternoon, how she had reached down to increase his pleasure while he was inside her, how she had closed her legs around him and whispered in his ear. It had touched him, it had sent him spiraling to feel her willingness, and it had been a lie! So, after everything he had done for her and after what he and she had shared, she thought that she could send him to his death with sugared words of caution, did she _? I should have known_ , he thought—the minute that he offered her an inheritance, all of her hemming and hawing about no plans with Bond disappeared, and suddenly she was soft compliance in bed, and could cough up just enough of an excuse to let him know that she was sufficiently clever to play Bayoumi and Bond against each other in their greedy bid for his head!

He had obviously underestimated this bookish simp: all sweetness and disarming headstrong wit and crocodile tears about love passing by her! Perhaps she had held Bond off to let Qasim have a better chance, and now was rubbing her hands together at the thought of what would be hers when it was all over, today. Oh, she was a slippery one, smart enough to rid herself of him and Bayoumi, and run off with Bond.

He would not make the same mistake twice: whether in his world or in hers the rules _were_ the same, because in both worlds she was still a female. The only difference was that the straight world had an extra layer of hypocrisy, pretty tears from that rag, bone, and hank of hair—Kipling’s description of a woman for whom stupid men risked their wealth and lives. That little savage had turned his words to Bernard about manhood against “Emile,” but when this work was finished _Locque_ would come back home to her with an iron fist in a velvet glove.

He opened a store room for the satchel and smiled to himself; women hated Kipling for his unblinking description of their selfishness, and she would hate it too. She would hate him for surviving to give her a few verses of his own. _Later_ , _poet_.

Once in the parking garage he started for the sedan, and pulled up short to see Bernard standing there. “Let me come with you,” Bernard said.

“What are you, five years old?” Locque waved a dismissive hand at him.

“I mean it,” the henchman insisted. “I don’t like this at all.”

Locque opened the driver’s door and threw the satchel in the back. He reached down for the gun beneath the seat. “Bond is not going to come at me; Gogol is. And Bayoumi is going to come after me as well. I’m ready for all three of them.” He checked the clip in the gun, then reached down for the extras.

“Gogol is not involved in this anymore, Locque. He’s backed off, as you should. Let me accompany you, or shadow you in the Lancia.”

Locque stared at him. “You’re a small time tard! What the hell do you know about General Gogol, or—” Then he stopped. Bernard was smiling at him, calmly, conspiratorially. His voice had been deeper, not peevish as usual, and the look in his eyes was different. Locque shoved the pistol into the small of his back. “Did you take some grammar lessons from Marion the Librarian upstairs?”

“I took lessons from you,” Bernard replied with relish. Locque raised his eyebrows. “Reputation, pretext, pretense. I need to explain it to you? You, the ice-cold woman-killing, psychiatrist-strangling, insane mercenary who blew up an opium warehouse and died in Albania? Do you really need ‘the tard’ to _explain it to you_?”

Locque stared at him in utter fascination, a smile growing on his lips. Bernard answered that smile. “Well, I’ll be damned,” Locque muttered.

Bernard bowed a little at the waist.

Locque needled him, “You play an idiot really well!”

“As I said, I learned from you!”

“Fuck you,” laughed Locque. “Tell what you know about Gogol.”

“Gogol does not want war with the west,” Bernard replied. Locque listened, betraying no emotion, neither disbelief nor trust. “He has actually teamed with Bond in the past to stifle the aggression of Soviet General Orlov and of certain generals in the United States. Even in his quest for the ATAC, he wanted more to keep it out of the hands of others; he would never have turned it over to the Soviet military, nor did he want Kristatos to sell it to another government. Kristatos was weighing several offers from several different governments, including Pakistan, you know.”

“Yes, I know,” Locque replied.

“Gogol may indeed be after you, but he would never kill Bond. And, not wanting to kill Bond, I’m not sure why he would be after you now. Whatever intelligence you have is out of date.”

There was a pause as Locque took this in.

“And I doubt that Gogol would kill a woman. He’s pretty sentimental where they are concerned.”

“Is that so? That will leave him open to being assassinated by a woman. Well, I am not sentimental where they are concerned. You’re not coming with me, but I’ll tell you what,” Locque said. “If I find out for certain that my sweet little girl is in cahoots with whoever my enemies are to gun me down this afternoon, when I come back here I will allow you to climb those stairs and walk down that hallway, and neither Andre nor anyone else will lift a finger to help her. Do what you like with her, but leave her alive and relatively uninjured for me afterward—I have something really special planned—but otherwise I give you _free reign_. Deal?”

The henchman brightened in a dark way. “Deal,” Bernard replied.

Locque slipped behind the wheel of the sedan.

#

 _Katherine is wrong_ , Bond thought. He was reading her latest communiqué:

THE FORGER?  
YOU AND HE ARE PAWNS

She had been just correct enough to be dangerously wrong: there was a third party playing he and Locque against each other, but it was not only Gogol. It was also Qasim Bayoumi. Qasim Bayoumi, who was himself only an intermediary for Gogol’s true adversary. Bond did not know for sure who that was just yet, but he had a good idea, and this was unlike anything that he had seen before.

Bond was as angry as he had ever been in his life. It surpassed his rage at Lisl’s death, and Bond had to admit that with his own eyes he had witnessed Emile Leopold Locque throw his body over Katherine’s to protect this completely innocent woman, and that after handing her over to be taken to the house had trained his pistol on the henchman escorting her, to ensure that she remained shielded instead of becoming a shield. Playing shadow around the villa, Bond had overheard Locque’s men express astonishment that “this pauper” “acts like she owns the place,” was mouthy and rebellious, and that Locque seemed to approve, and to spoil her. Whatever his long-term plans for Miss March, Locque did not seem to want her dead; at least for now, Katherine was safe.

Half a year ago, Bond would have paid Bayoumi a visit immediately after such an assassination attempt on a woman, but now his mind replayed that scene with Locque’s double on the cliff, and a voice inside of him warned him to wait. Locque wanted to talk. Bond would hear him out.

 _Katherine_. Both men had slipped and called her by her given name; oily Bayoumi had corrected himself, but Locque had not. Both were sufficiently clever to use that as false candor. Bond did not know what to think—and he did not like to be kept guessing.

Katherine had sent him another communiqué, brief, as he had instructed. This time the Lotus could send them directly to his watch without London decrypting entire sentences.

CAMEL?

DOVE?

BULL OF HEAV? [Bond assumed that this was HEAVEN.]

STALEMATE!

#

Locque was so pissed that he had taken the wrong turn off: instead of being on Nijvelsesteenweg toward the museum, he had ended up on route E19, on the other side of the arboretum. He was in the middle of the southwestern end of the Hallerbos forest. He could keep going the wrong way and meet up with Vlasmarktdreef, which swung back around back to the museum, but he was quite early; he decided to pull over and take a look at the report on the nation that was to be his new home.

He halted the sedan some ways off the road, near the place in the forest where the large brick bridge arched over the stream. He had been here plenty of times before, as a child with his parents, and knew the forest very well. He doubted that Bond knew it at all. However, on a rare sunny afternoon in late September, it would be populated and that was probably what made the agent choose the location.

The beauty of the area did not touch him now. It seemed as if a tight band encircled his chest, making him breathe heavily, though it was not difficult for him to draw breath. He did not remember most of the drive; he had spent it preoccupied, angry, and now… Without much enthusiasm, he read the report. It contained very little useful information—it emphasized cultural practices, myths, scenic areas. Katherine would like it.

He looked up briefly, staring through the windshield at the dense green that surrounded him. Unbidden, a sting came to his eye.

The nation was, of course, ancient, and boasted of great old ruins, a reproduction of one, a gate from the old walled fortress-city, had been reconstructed in the 1930s and now stood at the Pergamon Museum in Berlin. A former British colony, it was nominally a republic today but ruled by a strong and popular leader, an ally of the West, the peaceful successor to the Presidency after a number of _coup d’etats_. It was presently at war with its neighbor, which explained the urgency of Locque’s new employer. Before coming under the influence of Islam, it had been a pagan land, and its symbol for its main goddess, who ruled love, fertility, war, and sex—Locque smiled at that—and whose reproduced gate stood in Berlin, was the dove.

She had released the Bull of Heaven upon her enemies, but it was killed and sacrificed to the sun god.

Locque lowered the paper, his nostrils flaring. _What if Milos Columbo is dead_?

Why hadn’t he thought of this earlier? It was so obvious—Bond holding that goddamned dove pin! “You’ve killed too many people around me…”

 _Bayoumi knows that I am bound for this country_.

He gunned the engine and pulled back onto the road. There was no way to turn around—this was a two-lane highway in each direction with a berm median with trees—but he would pull ahead to Vlasmarktdreef, get on the westbound land of E19, and make for home as quickly as he could. Screw his appointment with James Bond. This was a feint, and Bayoumi had been a step ahead of him the whole time. Locque had been enticed away from Katherine and she was in danger for it, from Bayoumi who had targeted her, and from that animal, Bernard—and because he, Locque, had compounded wrong upon wrong in hotheaded foolishness, as if he were still that volatile twenty-year-old. And this time even Bond was not there to protect her.


	20. Hope and Pray

Bond paced on the terrace, holding but not drinking from his glass of wine as he watched the couples and the families below, walking the path that would take them into the arboretum and to Belgium’s famed Blue Forest. There would be no bluebells in late September, although the forest was still enticing with its subtle red and russet shades. He had to admit that Belgium’s forests were the nation’s jewels; Brussels itself was not particularly picturesque.

Finally, he saw the sedan, or at least a sedan, take the turn from Vlasmarktdreef and pull up the driveway to park next to the Lotus. The tall Belgian got out and looked up at him, his frames winking in the sunlight. Bond raised his glass, pretending that it was his PPK. However, to his surprise, a woman got out of the passenger door—a slight, long-haired brunette woman.

She shielded her eyes from the sun as she approached, and Bond leaned over the balustrade to get a look at her. Too late, he realized his mistake, for the Belgian had lowered to one knee and taken aim. The bullet caught him in his upper right arm and sent him crashing to the deck.

Desperately, Bond scrambled backward while switching his PPK to the left hand, but he was bleeding and had to press the wound. He threw himself into a backward somersault and ended up kneeling. A tap of his watch button against the deck brought the Lotus roaring to life. Its radar guided the car around the bend in the deck where Bond managed to stand, and a hatch opened in its roof. After climbing painfully over the railing amid the hail of bullets, Bond jumped for that hatch. He landed near the driver’s seat and hunkered down as the metal closed seamlessly above him. He felt a burning sensation in his left leg, but he had no time to check for new wounds; he gunned the engine and spun the car for the exit.

It was blocked by more cars, more sedans all alike, so he high-tailed it for the dirt trail that led into the forest, throwing rocks and dirt at the pedestrians who had scrambled out of his way. He saw, in his rearview mirror, the man dressed as Katherine leveling a pistol to fire useless bullets at the Lotus. “Damn you, Locque!” he muttered, grimly managing the wheel while blood ran down his arm.

#

Katherine sat at the dining room table with her collection of photographs. She had not looked at them since that night at the carriage house. Now she took them out one by one and studied them, seeing something of the present Locque in the eyes, nose, and mouth, that blinding flash of teeth, and seeing nothing of herself in his easygoing saunter. One was of him riding a horse, whereas her first horse ride had been on the night that he took her from the carriage house. Others were simply of him smiling, his high cheekbones and tousled hair framed by hedges. One was a family portrait: Alain Locque, his wife Cosima, and their son. His mother was beautiful, stately and tall, with finely chiseled features and dark hair pulled back into a chignon. Locque’s blond father also smiled easily, his eyes twinkling, and the three of them stood very close together. They seemed genuinely happy, and Katherine could not reconcile this man with the enemy of Jens nor with the evil bastard that his son called him. As was Emile Locque, the father seemed a contradiction. _Like father_ , _like son_.

She was agitated. Something was wrong; she had the distinct sense that Locque was walking into danger for which he was unprepared, and she did not know how she felt about it. Her natural horror of violence prevented her from wishing him dead, but now she knew that Qasim Bayoumi’s words were true: she had not resisted him very much. At first her compliance had been out of fear, knowing that there was no escape and seeking to prevent injury; yet even then, on that first night, after enduring his hands and lips on her body she had shamelessly whispered that she would like to have an orgasm with him as long as he did not do something monstrous to her against her will when her guard was down.

She replayed in her mind the scene of him looking up in surprise, of his smile. “Well! This is a first. You are very honest. You won’t be hurt. I told you to let go. I want you to come in my mouth and I am a conventional fiend. No dirty tricks, I promise you.” He had kept his word and she had, at last, loosened. It was true that she had not been touched by a man in a long time, but that was not enough of an explanation.

Bernard sauntered into the room and she flicked her eyes at him in disgust. “Jesus, how touching,” he mocked when he saw what she was doing. She gathered up the photos and tamped them into a neat pile. “You’re a cold bitch. Do you save it all for Locque?”

He positioned himself between her and the hallway, and his face challenged her.

“Yes, I do,” she informed him.

“Bullshit. You hate Locque’s guts. He fucking kidnapped and raped you, and he hates you, too. He hates all women, ever since his fiancé threw him to the wolves to save her own worthless ass. That was his introduction to the underworld, you know. They took every last cent he had and beat him to within an inch of his life, and she was responsible.”

Katherine did not know what to say.

“You did not know about that, did you? And now, here you are—alone, with us.” Bernard grinned. It made the hair stand up on the back of her neck.

“I was not raped,” Katherine said into the blur that was whirling around her.

“Then,” Bernard said, “you are a slut. And his slut or mine—what does it matter?”

“You’re not that stupid,” she answered blindly.

“But you think that I _am_ stupid, sweetheart,” he replied nastily, “whereas you think that Locque has all the answers. Well, how stupid was it for Locque to leave you here, unprotected? Does that strike you as a good idea?”

Katherine heart beat wildly in her chest. “Does incurring his wrath when he finds out strike you as a good idea?”

“His wrath!” Bernard shoved the idea away with his hand. “Locque is a cultivated criminal, not a born one. He’s faking it. He doesn’t actually have the stomach for most of the kills that people credit him with doing. He’s not an ice man like Kuklinski, and he’s not me. I’ll kill a woman, I’ll kill a child, and I have killed animals, which he is too soft to do.”

“So Locque is a college boy, you’re saying?” Katherine choked out, trying to maintain her mocking tone. Bernard was looking her in the eyes and it riveted her in fear.

“You know and I know that Locque is never coming back,” Bernard said. “He is going to his death. Plus, he thinks that you have betrayed him, honey. Well, I don’t think that you have, but it does not really matter, does it? Locque told me to enjoy you when he returned if he found out you were guilty. But he’s a dead man in any case. I think that you’re perfectly innocent and there’s nothing to stop me from nailing you anyway!”

“Andre!” Katherine shouted, and he promptly appeared. Bernard snorted with laughter. Andre moved toward her, stepping in front of Bernard, but there was a look of despair in his pale eyes and she understood the reason. Andre could fight Bernard, but he could not fight all of them, and in a fight over a woman the other men would side with the rapist in order to enjoy their one chance. Katherine wracked her brains. If Locque did not return, she was in danger; if he returned suspecting her, she was in danger. She needed to convince both him and these men that she was on Locque’s side and that Locque was still top dog.

Katherine realized that she was holding her breath. She remembered Locque’s words: _Women hold their breath when they most need air. Breathe_! She did. She pointed to the door. “Go after Locque, Andre. Right now!”

Both men looked surprised. “You heard me,” Katherine ordered, raising her voice. “Tail him in the Lancia. Make sure that he’s all right. Do as I say!”

Andre’s brow furrowed, but he left.

Bernard did not move and his smile widened, and she was aware of small sounds in the side room and on the spiral staircase, of the men who were approaching to see what would happen now, who would make the first move against her with Andre gone. None of them particularly liked Bernard, but no one would pass up an opportunity if he opened the door for them. There was no one to help her.

Katherine, seizing all of her courage, stepped forward quickly and slapped Bernard’s face with all of her might. She could not hurt him but the crack of it was impressive. His eyes blazed with furor at her daring and he lifted a hand in turn, but the words were already spilling from her: “Don’t you ever speak of your employer being dead again! Do you hear me? Not until I see Locque’s body with my own eyes will I believe that he no longer has authority in this house. How dare you!”

She drew a trembling breath, clenched and unclenched her stinging hand, and her next lines spilled from her as if inspired. “Bernard, you had better hope and pray that Locque returns alive, and that when he does he does not find out how you stabbed him in the back the minute he turned it. All right, you can do what you want to me, and so can all of the rest of you…rape and kill me, go ahead. Rob me of my jewels, turn this house upside down. Are you listening, gentlemen?

“Then you can take all of those dresses out of my closet and wear them, and you may as well, for while these men may be on your side today, Bernard, tomorrow they will spread the word of how you fucked over your employer and killed his woman. Who would hire you next? Who the hell would even acknowledge you? Your name would be worthless and you would be screwed. Not to mention, this property would pass to my family and my greedy shit of a father would steamroll you for those diamonds, and anything that my father does includes a spotlight and a full orchestra, so I hope that you enjoy being hounded by reporters, because my mother can cry on cue like the attention whore that she is.” She heard one of the men snigger at this.

It seemed that she could not stop talking. Her jaw ached as if she had been lecturing for an hour. “Then, for sure nobody would hire you—nobody wants publicity like that. So go ahead. What are you going to do—kill all of these men too when you’re finished with me so that they don’t talk? Don’t forget about Andre. Don’t forget my family. My father would love to publicly ‘forgive’ a cretin like you, and he would create such a media circus around your ass that would make you beg to be put in prison! Brother, you had better just hope and pray that Locque returns in one piece, because if he does that’s all I want, and I don’t give enough of a shit about you to mention this to him.”

Bernard did not look cowed as she had hoped, but he was listening to her. There was now absolute silence in the house. Katherine and Bernard stood glaring at each other, but she held that glare.

“It’s nothing to me,” Katherine added. “If Locque is dead then nothing means anything to me. You’ll find out the difference between my being his slut and my being yours very quickly! You could never be the man he is. So what are you waiting for, Bernard?”

She was out of words. If he attacked her now she was a dead woman. They both stood, breathing hard, and staring at each other.

At last, one of the men stepped into view. “Seriously, Bernard—we should go after Andre. I have a bad feeling about all of this, and Locque will need more than one man to back him up. Leave the woman alone.”

 _Fuck you_ , Bernard mouthed at Katherine, and he did not move.

The man tugged on Bernard’s arm. “Come on, man. Let’s do our jobs. Forget her and come with me.”

Bernard drew his finger across his throat and his eyes blazed at Katherine, but he turned for the door and followed the other man.

After the two of them were gone, Katherine felt the other men’s eyes on her. She picked up the photographs and headed for the bedroom. Her face crumpled and she could not stop a small sob from escaping, but at least she now had the hope that crying did not betray weakness but instead served to underscore her words. If the others decided to follow her to the bedroom there would be nothing that she could do to prevent them, but they did not. They stood in silence and watched her retreat down the hallway.

She slammed the bedroom door shut and locked it, and the tears ran down her face.

As Locque approached Vlasmarktdreef to make the turn to go westward on E-19, he saw the Lancia screech to a crawl northeast on that road to intersect him, or attempt to, but Vlasmarktdreef crossed above E-19 on an overpass. Locque swore and pulled off the road again. This was what haste did to one—haste, and anger, and impulsivity. He was acting like Kriegler. Despite his memories of Hallerbos, he did not know the Flemish area of Belgium very well and had not sufficiently planned for all possibilities, as a man should. He honked the horn flashed the lights, and Andre stopped and got out to lean down toward him at the rail. “Go back to the house!” Locque bellowed at him, leaning out of the sedan’s window.

“Your girl sent me after you. Bernard’s pestering her, but she told me to watch your back,” Andre replied. “Bond has been shot at the museum. I came around this way around on the off chance that I would see you.”

The Belgian let out his breath in disgust and reached beneath the seat for his gun.

“It’s an ambush. Bond escaped into the forest, but we are outnumbered. Don’t try to find a way west; Bayoumi’s men are lying in wait on E-19 for you. He has his minions stationed along it between here and Halle 21 to shoot you on sight. The museum is crawling with his men—if you go there, you are dead. Keep going the way that you are going.”

“How many of Bayoumi’s men are in the forest?” Locque asked.

Andre looked confused. “Why?”

Locque shoved an extra clip into his pocket. “Stash the Lancia and get down here. We’re going after Bond.” As Andre pulled out of sight, he lifted the receiver of his phone.

“Locque, it’s Arent,” said the voice on the other end, surprising him. “We’re on our way to you. Bernard and me. We’re in Bernard’s Ferrari.”

Locque lifted his eyebrows. “Good thinking, to bring the phone with you. How’s my girl?”

“She’s fine. She’s fine, Locque. Really.”

“She’d better be,” he replied angrily. “Where are you?”

“We’re approaching the Halle-Centrum.”

“Listen carefully: I took the wrong road, which is a good thing, because we’re under attack. Let me speak to _Bernard_ ,” Locque growled.

#

Bond left the Lotus for a dark patch of trees, lugging his first aid kit with him. The car was protected, but a trap. He needed time and quiet to think. Sitting in the bushes, he pulled at the package of dressings with his teeth, looking at the new wound in his leg. He had been lucky that no artery was hit, but if he did not get this bleeding under control, he would be in trouble. The Lotus had already sent his desperate call to Smithers, who was nearby, but the woods were crawling with Qasim’s—and his employer’s—men.

Well, that was it: Qasim’s assignment was to kill Katherine, but not Locque. Locque was being maneuvered. And Bayoumi’s employer? Bond still did not know yet who that was, but Katherine’s clues had given him corroboration for his guess. Damn, damn—right under his nose!


	21. Innocence

“Bernard, you and Arent are to come the way that I did, through the forest on route E-19,” Locque instructed. “And as soon as you hit trees, I want you to crank that machine gun into them as you go. Mow down as many of Bayoumi’s men as you can, create as much mayhem as possible. I know that you’ve been dying to use that toy, Bernard—the metal toy, I mean.”

“Your other _toy_ can sit on her fucking shelf,” Bernard grouched. Locque hung up the phone in satisfaction. “That’s my bookworm!” he crowed to Andre. If Bernard was not ecstatic at the prospect of mowing the grass with bullets, it could only be that Katherine had fired off a few rounds of her own.

“Are we going to wait here until they come?” Andre asked.

Locque put down the phone. “No way, we’re going to drive to meet them. Take the wheel.” He opened the back left passenger door.

“You can’t hold off Bayoumi’s gunmen with just a PPK!” Andre yelled.

Locque smiled at him. “I will, given the element of surprise and with cross traffic protecting us. Head west.” He pointed not at the westbound lanes across the wooded median, but at the innermost _eastbound_ lane.

Andre swore and slipped behind the wheel.

“Just don’t crash head-on into Bernard and Arent,” Locque said, “or—anyone else.”

Bernard’s reputation for mayhem was no idiot act: though he was one man with a machine gun he mercilessly cleared the roadside coming east, while Locque judiciously pecked off the figures in the undergrowth as Andre, slouched in the driver’s seat, deftly zig-zagged the gauntlet of beeping cars that came at them. Qasim’s men shot innocent drivers, whose cars went careening, creating more confusion. The distant blaring of sirens drove even more of Qasim’s mercenaries back into the forest. “Run, you butchers. When we see Arent and Bernard,” Locque said, “let me out near the small bridge over the stream.”

“Let you _out_?”

“I know this forest. I can walk around unseen. I know what I am doing.” He slapped another clip into his PPK and reached down for the small satchel that sat on the floor.

As he was exiting the vehicle, a silver Cadillac Cimarron that was headed toward them slowed, its lights flashing. The car swerved, and squealed to a stop in front of Locque. Andre raised his gun, but Locque waved him off. He could see nothing through the tinted glass until it lowered. The driver was another interchangeable hired man, unrecognizable to him. The older man in back opened the door and gestured to the empty seat beside him. “Get in.”

Locque just stared at him.

“Come with me,” pleaded the older man. “Come with me now.”

“I cannot,” Locque replied.

“Forget the girl!”

“Forget the boy.”

The man sighed. He gestured emphatically with his arms as he spoke in his deep voice. “Let it all go. Forget Bond, and her. I can help you!”

“It is too late for me,” Locque replied, and motioned for Andre to drive ahead. Andre cast a dubious look at the intruder, but jumped back behind the wheel and drove off. “It’s too late,” Locque told the man again, and ran around the front of the car toward the forest. He heard the car door slam again. The engine gunned, and the Cadillac lurched forward. Locque threw the satchel to the ground next to the creek, then climbed down the rocks of the bridge toward it.

#

Bond was bleeding too much. With an effort, he fashioned another tourniquet on his leg, checked his arm, then concentrated on his breathing, trying to slow his heartbeat. His watch signaled another message to Smithers. The bullets were trapped in his flesh and he was not going anywhere.

#

Locque lay as still as a stone in the grass, catching his breath, waiting, waiting for Bayoumi’s men to flee the approaching police, waiting for his moment, and taking some time to think.

Locque did not believe in innocence. Such Judeo-Christian, naïve ideas had never been instilled in him, despite the Mass and the Eucharist and the scriptural lessons that he had been forced to endure as a child. He believed only in the realities of power and pleasure, of both domination and cooperation, and he knew that pure altruism did not exist, so neither did innocence. He did not believe in the innocence of children, for example, for they were sensual, though not expressly sexual, beings. They were aware of their bodies in a childish way, they were selfish, devious, and greedy in a childish way, they sought power over each other in their children’s world, and so, all people being born amoral, they were immoral in a childish way—not to the extent of ruthless men, but not cherubs and not without blemish.

Likewise, he did not believe in the innocence of women, of priests, or of what were called good people. Each person had his or her self-interest at heart, and that was natural, normal, to be expected. The notion of their innocence stole their dignity from them, reduced them to mere obedience to authority, and lessened whatever true humanity they could find within themselves even while fulfilling their own needs. Good and evil, sin and redemption did not mean much to him except as myths that comforted others, and as bloodless abstractions of passion, of hatred and desire and love, in which he did believe. There was only life and death, or to be more accurate, the life worth living and the death that one could hope to have.

However, it seemed to him that Katherine was seeking something more personal out of life, in which satisfaction and altruism blended, work that would give her an outlet for her intellectual gifts but that would not overshadow her life or interfere with her other interests, which with the exception of her adventurous streak were traditionally feminine: literature, beauty, a household, nature, peace, love.

She wanted to be loved; he knew that now. Despite her hidebound sanctimony she allowed a man to be the man. She had been truthful when she expressed her fear of never finding love, even though she did not want it from him. She had had a nightmare of him dying and had not lied to him about it causing her pain. No woman was innocent and she was not, but she was by nature truthful and uncomplicated. She had feelings, yet had not reacted with unhinged panic at her plight, nor even asked to be let go, as so many others had, but had warmed to him somewhat. She had even tried to warn him today out of her own sense of decency, because despite everything she saw him as a man, and there had been nothing more to it than that. He remembered the feeling of her body in the night, seeking warmth from him, and later, protection, comfort. He remembered the look in her eyes when he walked out of their bedroom today. She did not love him, but he knew now that she also did not despise him.

That was enough. Locque ached to go home to her. Death was all around him and death loomed before him with this upcoming mission, but he still had a few days reprieve—if he could survive the next few minutes. He would do whatever it took to walk through the door of that bedroom in his villa again, and pull her into his arms and just hang on to her as long as he had left, without words, without thoughts, without argument, and without her damned poetry. She was sweet and tolerant, and he longed for her. He admitted it.

He wiped his forehead with his arm and listened intently for any sound. After another moment, he rose at last and walked quickly through the foliage.

#

_I’m losing too much blood_ , Bond thought.

He squinted against his light-headedness. He raised his gun but there was no clear target. The only thing to do was listen for any sound.

Hearing footsteps in the grass, he struggled to stand. He pressed his body against a tree trunk and waited. A tall figure, with winking octagonal glasses, disappeared behind a distant bush.

Another bullet struck him, in the left shoulder. Locque had fired and hit his mark. Bond’s pistol went flying, and as he slid down the trunk, Bond managed to turn. Walking toward him from the back, a man wearing sunglasses, Qasim Bayoumi, leveled his own pistol. Glaring at him, Bond sank to his knees, unable to do anything but wait. “I’m sorry, Katherine,” he said softly.

The bullet whizzed past him and struck its target behind him. Bond turned to see Locque sprawled in the grass. As he watched, the Belgian’s chest still lifted and fell with his breath, despite the spreading wound on his chest. In a moment, that chest no longer rose.

Bond turned back to Bayoumi, who was continuing to walk toward him. Bayoumi’s eyes were hidden behind dark aviator glasses, and he smiled at the agent. “Just leave the girl alone, that’s all I ask,” Bond managed. “Just let her be, Bayoumi. Do whatever you want with m—”

Bayoumi reached up and pulled off his wig, freeing his windswept light brown hair. As he came closer a pair of familiar full lips smiled, briefly. “No deal, James Bond,” said that deep voice. “I like her.”

Bond’s gaze swung from Locque to the dead, bespectacled double splayed on the ground, his own wig lying beyond his blond head. The distant sound of a helicopter made them both look skyward.

“That will be Gogol,” Emile Leopold Locque informed James Bond. “I was told that Gogol was not behind this, but obviously he is involved. He is looking for me. He shall find you instead.” He turned to go.

“I would have given my help to you today!” Bond yelled at the retreating form.

Locque did not turn around. “And today, I would have asked for it. Pity.” He did not stop. Bond stared helplessly up at the helicopter’s descent. It was still too high to spot either of them, but would most likely land in the clearing not far away. There was no help for it. Smithers could not reach him in time. He was gravely wounded and would let Gogol take him.

He would go to the source, and speak to Gogol at last.

#

Andre, Bernard, and Arent were waiting at the rendezvous point with both Bernard’s car and the Lancia when Locque emerged from the scrub and walked up the road to them. “How the hell did you get out?” Bernard demanded when he saw Locque.

Locque smiled at him. “I merely showed the police my identification.”

“Bullshit!”

Locque let this go and turned to Andre. “I seem to have bad luck with sedans. Well, I suggest that we stop in Halle for some supplies before we head home.” He motioned for Andre to ride with Bernard, and slipped behind the wheel of the Lancia. Arent climbed into the passenger side of the sports car and irritably pushed back the seat; he was a tall man, and Katherine was small.

“I’m not forgetting this,” Locque said to him. “I knew I could count on Andre, but I can guess whose idea it was to follow him, and to get Bernard out of the house. When I see loyalty, I reward it. Believe me, you are one of a dying breed.”

“Locque,” Arent said quietly, “Katherine slapped—”

Locque turned to him. “Who?”

“Your woman slapped Bernard in the face and reamed him out in front of everybody for saying that you weren’t coming back, that you were already dead. She told him that she wouldn’t believe it until she saw your body, and if that he laid a hand on her, he would never work for anyone again for having betrayed you.”

“ _Did_ she?” Locque guided the Lancia back to the highway.

“Yes—she really tore him a third asshole!” There was admiration in the henchman’s voice. “Locque, Jesus Christ, if I were you I’d grab that girl and keep her by my side at all times, especially around him. She is special.”

“Ah, hell,” Locque tossed out, “it was fortunate that you were there to hear the whole thing!” Arent was silent in the face of his sarcasm. Locque could imagine what the man was leaving out of the story, but the fact that he and Bernard were here to face him was an indication that Katherine was still in good health. He frowned at the man to conceal how pleased he was with her.

“Well, now I know that Bernard does not keep a bargain,” the Belgian mused grimly, “although he may have been bluffing her—and the rest of you. Bernard could be smart enough to manipulate the situation so that one of _you_ laid a hand on her first, and then come running right to me to point fingers. Did you think of that?”

The henchman, looking sandbagged, shook his head.

Locque settled back into his seat and stared through the windshield. “Well, I suggest that you keep that in mind from now on! I do not care who started it. The man who ruins anything of mine is a man who suffers before he dies, and if I have to teach that lesson to every single one of you, I shall do so. I have plenty of land for graves, and I can always employ other men to dig them.”

Arent did not answer.

“I don’t care how special she is, she is only a woman and there is no pussy worth risking my punishment,” Locque continued. “So, you stood by long enough to listen to her hand Bernard his ass, eh? Next time, I suggest that you step in to protect her sooner, Arent. She didn’t just slap down Bernard; she reamed all of you out, because you _assholes_ were expecting to take advantage of my absence. Weren’t you? Don’t think I don’t know that. From this moment on, I expect my orders to be _followed_ , to the _letter_. Even when I am not looking. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Make sure that all of them understand that. You are now second in command beneath Andre. Bernard won’t listen to you, so watch him, and report to me what he does.”

“Will do.”

“Everything that she learned,” Locque added, “she learned from me. Do the same. She can out-think Bernard, and I will always out-think her. Keep your mouth shut, and your eyes open—don’t trust anyone’s words, don’t react immediately with anger. If she can do it, you can as well, and you’ll have to, because you’re not inheriting the world that I did. Both men and women suffer in our business for being incapable of being taught. She is not one of us but even she does not make that mistake, so don’t you, either.”

“Got it,” Arent replied.

#

Bond lay on the stretcher, and felt the needle to the plasma pack sting his arm. He lay passively, helpless and hating it, preferring action, but the world was a blur. This helicopter was quiet, not the deafening Mi-2 light Soviet helicopter that had brought Gogol to St. Cyril’s for the ATAC; how had Gogol gotten his paws on a Belgian medical evac? It rose into the sky, and when Bond opened his eyes again, it was indeed General Anatol Gogol looking down at him, and even smiling a little.

Bond glanced out of the window and saw that they were over water. “Have you ever been to Cuba, Mr. Bond?” Gogol asked him.

Bond pursed his lips. “Not officially.”

Gogol smiled wider at the agent’s hedging. “Cuba has the best doctors in the world. It is a beautiful place.” And indeed, the attendant who was taking his pulse smiled at the agent from a dark, handsome, Caribbean face. “You will be the government’s honored guest for a few days.”

“Tell Castro I’d rather be working,” Bond said.

“Surely you jest, Mr. Bond! That is Cuba’s unofficial motto!” Gogol laughed, but his eyes remained grave. The helicopter sped over the waters of the Atlantic, and both the secret agent and the KGB head turned to stare idly at the horizon.


	22. The Kingdom

The group of rumpled but well-dressed men loitering in the open air grocery market of Halle received looks, but appreciative ones, especially from the women. Andre and Arent smiled back, but Bernard leered, and his audience shied from him. Locque had gone alone into the chemist’s, obviously on an errand for the girl. “How he dotes on that bitch,” grouched Bernard.

Arent turned to him under Andre’s watchful eye. “She rather dotes on him as well. That galls you, doesn’t it?”

“I don’t give a rat’s ass.”

“Christ, Bernard, perhaps Locque should pick up a box of tampons for _you_.”

“Girls, girls,” Andre put in humorously, seeing that Locque had emerged.

He walked up to them with a brown paper bag. “I told you fools to break up—you look like spooks. Especially you,” he added to Bernard, “Mr. Expert-on-Gogol. Not involved anymore, eh?” He glared at Bernard, who looked away.

“Bernard’s sulking because a shop lady would not let him feel her melons,” Arent said.

“She probably did not want to bleed from the same areas that had better still be intact on my girl,” Locque replied baldly.

“Your girl is not my type,” Bernard snapped.

“You don’t seem to have a type,” Arent put in.

“Neither does she!” Bernard was not to be rebuked.

“Oh, she does,” Locque contradicted him confidently, “and you’re looking at him.”

Instead of heading straight for the cars, Locque led them on a meandering path through the market. “I want to get a newspaper. Bernard, fucking read a book, all right? Read _one_ book in your life worth reading, to find out how not to make the women keep away from you. I read a great book: _The Kingdom_ , by Robert Lacey. It’s about Abdul Aziz Ibn Sa’ud and the founding of Saudi Arabia.

“Even you won’t believe the control the Saudis exert over women. You would probably consider it a wet-dream, Bernard, and that’s your problem. Heavy-handedness like that is a losing battle. It’s the woman who decides to have the man, in the end; you can rape her but you cannot _have_ her. She must decide to have you. Abdul Aziz knew that but his descendants don’t. He was happy and the Saudi Royal Family is miserable. Plus they’re in debt, being stupid and lazy, as he was not.

“Arabs then made a distinction between raids and war, but even in the midst of war they did not touch their enemy’s women. To do so was shameful, unmanly. The victors would always leave at least one tent standing for the women, with pots and food for them, for next time, it could be _their_ mothers or sisters at the mercy of invaders.

“Abdul Aziz had four wives and many concubines. The man must treat all wives equally and all ‘servants’ with mercy. Abdu Aziz loved sex and made sure that the woman enjoyed it, too. And he said, ‘As the woman should prepare herself for me, I should prepare myself for her,’ that is, clean up, wear nice clothes, and smile, Bernard. If a fucking _Saudi king_ can do it, you may want to think about it.”

Bernard pushed himself ahead, and the other three observed him. “Men with no women in their lives,” offered Arent, “end up weird. They become angry at everything. That’s a quote from one of the guys I knew in the Hell’s Angels, when I was in Los Angeles. He was talking about men in the Pagans—those motherfuckers are mean as hell. Twisted, too. Bernard would fit in with them.”

“Hey, your girl’s father is in the news again,” Andre observed, lifting a newspaper from its rack alongside a grocer’s booth.

“Let me see that!” commanded Locque.

#

There was a tapping, but not at the bedroom door—down the hallway, at the entrance. Katherine went to the door but did not open it. She clutched a pillowcase holding a large hairbrush, the only weapon that she had. “Miss?” It was Andre’s voice.

“Yes,” she replied through the door.

“We’re back. Locque is back. You can come out, now; he’ll be up in a few minutes. Are you all right?”

“Yes, I’m fine.” She hesitated. “Where is Locque?”

“He will be up shortly. Something delayed him—some news.”

“News?”

Andre paused. “He has a computer terminal in the basement. He goes in that room and lets none of us in it. I don’t know what he’s checking on, but he gets some sort of intelligence from it.”

“Is—Bernard back as well?”

“He is,” Andre admitted, “but he is outside.”

She sighed, and leaned her forehead against the door.

“He is staying outside from now on. I have no control over it, but Locque knows what he is doing. I think it’s a good idea for you to come out now, Miss. You must keep up the front. I know it’s difficult.”

She did not reply, and she did not open the door.

“Miss Katherine—I am your friend. Trust me. The worst is over. Open the door and come out, Miss. You must. Please.”

Without much enthusiasm she hit the handle and opened the door. Andre smiled a little when she emerged. “You certainly impressed them!”

Katherine was in no mood to be complimented. “They’ve never seen a woman slap a man’s face before?”

“Yes, plenty of times, but not out of loyalty. They are used to gold-diggers and grifters. Cowards. They expected you to collude with Bernard against Locque to save yourself.”

“I _was_ doing it to save myself,” she said nastily. “I wasn’t doing it for anyone else but me.”

“I realize that,” Andre said, pained by her puffy face as she stood there. “But you are very subtle. Perhaps some of them realize too that it was an act, but the effect is the same. You did not take the easy way out.”

“The way out!” She said it to the ceiling. “There is no way out!” She felt tears sting her eyes again.

“There is. There will be. You will find it soon. You are a survivor. Come,” he said, and gestured for her to return to the main room. “Act as though nothing has happened or you’ll spoil everything that you told Bernard, _please_ , Miss.”

When she obeyed and stalked down the hall, he stood back, then withdrew. Katherine rubbed her sore hand, then walked to the kitchen.

#

Katherine was rolling out the pastry dough when she felt the prickle on her skin that someone was watching her. She whirled, fearing that it was one of the men—Bernard perhaps, or that spooky Arent—but it was Locque, who had let himself in quietly and was now standing a few feet away, pulling at his gloves. He threw them on the counter and stared at her. She looked away, knowing that her eyes were puffy and red.

“Did you meet with James?” she finally asked the wall. “What did he say?”

He did not answer, but seemed to derive some conclusion from his scrutiny when she glanced at him again. He relaxed a little. “You are not disappointed to see me?”

She looked honestly confused. “Why should I be?”

Again, Locque did not answer. He just stood looking at her in a way that she found different. She shrugged and turned back to folding the dough over the pie dish, dismissing him and the subject of James Bond; the two had obviously not spoken at all. She trimmed the dough and crimped the edges, while he watched with all the animation of an ancient Egyptian statue. “Where would you go,” the Belgian asked finally, “if I opened that door right now?” He pointed to the front door.

Katherine noticed the red flecks on his gloves. She opened her mouth and shut it again. His own eyes narrowed. “Don’t you know what’s happened?” he asked her.

“What?” she asked blankly, looking at his gloves.

“A friend of your mother has hired a special prosecutor. I have never seen anything like it—I did not know that _prosecutors_ could be hired in your country just like attorneys. Your mother is accusing your father of orchestrating everything, and he is accusing both her and you of collaborating with him in return. Your mother is not exactly backing you up. It is a royal mess. It’s ludicrous and likely won’t result in any indictment against you, as there is no evidence of any guilt on your part, but the press is loving it right now—and your father is loving the press.” He tilted his face so that she looked at him finally. Katherine said nothing. “If your James Bond gets his hands on you, he would have to immediately turn you over to Interpol, to be remanded to the United States. You’re under subpoena to testify.”

“I know. And prosecutors can’t be hired—my mother is probably suing my father, and hired a private detective. Just great.” She glanced at the ceiling.

“You asked me what prison is like. Try being hounded by the national press for a scandal. So, what do you want to do?”

“Why is there blood on your gloves?” she quavered.

He let out his breath in annoyance. “Are you deaf? I am asking you a _question_. Where would you go, if I let you walk out of that door? Would you go home, to the United States? I would not advise returning to Brussels.”

She paused before she answered. “I suppose that I would try to find out why Jens says that he’s a prisoner of your father.”

Locque tilted his head. “Spoke to you about that, did he?”

“Yes, he told me everything. It was a nice change. He treated me like a person.”

“I’m surprised he would trust a stranger so quickly with something so private. Look,” he said, and took a step toward her to emphasize his words, “if I cannot help Jens, you cannot. Don’t go near that situation. My father is an extremely dangerous man.”

 _And you only slightly so?_ “Did your father kill Jens’ daughter?” she asked.

“Not with his hands. Not himself—he is not that honest. The murderer is a chief of police in Brussels. My father protected him, and still does. All the more reason for you not to fall into the hands of the Brussels police, my poet.”

Katherine lowered her eyes.

“So,” Locque mused, “you would run.” He sounded pleased.

She went to the sink and waved her hands beneath the water without feeling it at all. “I would rather run, yes. Especially from you.”

“Aw, you wound me, sweetheart. But _I_ can protect you,” he boasted. “Surely you know that you cannot trust James Bond, now. And everything I said before, about becoming prey to any man who comes along, would still be true, more than ever. Hell, I would not put it past that psycho Bernard to follow you out of here and try again to—”

“So, you’re not really asking me a question!” Katherine replied. She grabbed a towel and mangled it between her wet hands. “You never really do. You’re always maneuvering what I say.”

“No, I am asking you, as I have asked you many other times. If you would only be honest from the first, and quit holding back, you would feel less maneuvered. Don’t force me to dig. I want to know what you _think_.”

“All right, then!” She threw the towel down as he had his gloves. “I think that my father is worse than yours.”

“Oh, come on.”

“My father has probably killed hundreds of people—hundreds and hundreds of people. He told them that they were healed, and so they never saw a doctor again. It’s been going on for years. Who knows how many people are dead because of him.”

Locque shook his head. “There’s no comparison. All of those people wanted to be told what he said to them. If it wasn’t your father they followed, they would have found someone else to tell them the same thing. That is not murder. You don’t know the first thing about it! My father most certainly did not deliver news that anyone wanted to hear.” His smile was wry. “You are angry with me because I left you alone with that horde, and you have a right to be pissed and I do not blame you—but you _handled_ it! From what I hear you handled it superbly. You dug deep down and found a weapon, and my sweet, that is precisely what I tried to teach you about being prepared. You beat down that punk Bernard—”

“Whom you still employ!” she snapped.

“Honey, you assured him that if I came back you would not rat him out to me, and you must keep your promises, too. _You_ have a reputation to preserve, now.”

Her reply spilled from her as easily as before, with Bernard. “Yes, I found a weapon—why wouldn’t I? I am my father’s daughter. My father kills without using his hands, as you said yours did. It _is_ the same thing. My father kills with words. Isn’t that how your father killed, too—with words? Perhaps accusing her of being some kind of traitor, _as you did me_? And does he hold Jens there with words? You said that he was not honest; well, neither is my father. You told me that money is a weapon, and a woman without a weapon is a possession. What about words? Don’t words kill? And don’t you use words against me?”

“Babe, I—yes, I suspected you, but listen.”

What a rare stammer from Master Inquisitor! She cut him off. “Well, I used words against Bernard, and I can use words against you, too. Words are my weapon. Do you want me to be honest? Then I would have no defense at all. I can’t be honest with you, because I am a thing to you, not a woman. So, talk is sex—or maybe it’s bedroom lies…betrayal. I may as well make the crime fit the punishment! You can’t possess my thoughts. That is the only thing I still own that you cannot take from me, so I sure as hell am going to keep something of my own! So do your worst, sweet-talker, and dig at my insides trying to find out what I _think_ , because nobody ever taught a woman to lie better than my father did.”

He heart was thudding in her chest and her breath was shaky, but she faced him and held his gaze. He was silent again. He gathered up his gloves and left the room. She contemplated the bloodstains on the counter, but decided not to clean them up.


	23. Blofield

“Are you quite comfortable, Mr. Bond?” Gogol asked.

Bond opened his eyes to see that he was in a hospital room. It was sunny outside, and a warm breeze blew through the window. “I could use a drink!” the agent told the KGB head.

Gogol chuckled. “Of course! A martini.”

Bond nodded. “Please.”

He was not prepared to see a nurse bring him a martini glass, with a twist of lime and all, to his room and set it on his tray, but there it was. Bond sipped it; it was excellent gin. Apparently there were some supplies that could reach even this moon base.

“I fear,” Bond said, and took a swallow at last, “that I am becoming too old for all of this.” He glanced ruefully at the bandages on his arms and on his leg.

“Ah, we are both growing older, Mr. Bond. And the world is becoming more ruthless. I do not understand the rules anymore.” Gogol got up to look out of the window.

“Let’s cut to the chase,” Bond snapped at the man’s back. “Is that a reference to your innocence? I’m tired and I don’t want to interrogate you. Out with it, Gogol. Did you kill Columbo?”

“I did not kill Milos Columbo, Mr. Bond. I swear I did not.” Gogol folded his hands and looked down at them, still turned away from him. “True, I did engage all of my forces to roust Locque from wherever he was hiding, but I did nothing to bring you into this. At first I suspected Orlav in Columbo’s murder, but he did not do it, either. And the woman… No, Bond. I would never harm her. Monstrous!” He turned back to fix Bond with his direct gaze.

“Then it is your nemesis who is to blame,” Bond replied, choosing his words carefully so as not to reveal the man’s name first. “Does Emile Leopold Locque know the extent of his involvement?”

“I am guessing not. I doubt that Locque has made the connection in his mind even with Qasim Bayoumi.” Gogol shook his head.

“Did Columbo?”

“I think so. Of course I cannot be sure, but one of my agents was captured by Columbo’s men in Corfu, questioned, then released to us. He was grilled by Columbo personally, and as always when civilians question a trained agent, the civilian reveals more than he learns. It seems that Columbo was worried about another smuggler encroaching on his territory. Columbo died the same night that my agent was released, perhaps in an attempt to frame the KGB.

“Killing the woman could not be Bayoumi’s idea,” Gogol added. “Qasim Bayoumi is a filthy, weak man. He would _do_ it, but only if commanded. And he was commanded, Mr. Bond.”

“What kind of a man am I—or we—dealing with, then?” asked Bond.

“Ruthless,” said Gogol. He shook his head at Bond then. “Do not doubt it.”

Bond leaned back into the pillow.

“For some years I have been planning my escape,” Gogol said then. “Not unlike the myth surrounding the writer Jerzy Kosiński, I began to create a layer of bureaucracy, complete with policies and procedures, official titles and seals, to forge my own papers.”

“You are seeking to defect?” Bond asked in disbelief. “You?” Gogol’s face relaxed into its folds and he suddenly looked quite old. “I find that difficult to believe!”

“Not defect, Mr. Bond. Disappear. You and I know that I would be a dead man if I defected. No government, not even the United States, would risk the balance of power to protect such a high profile communist as me; I would be interrogated, then killed, in secret. At best, I would be held for the rest of my life in a maximum security bunker in some small U.S. territory. No, Mr. Bond, I was preparing a pretext for a trip to Libya, in which I could hide and be difficult to access.”

“You would leave Mother Russia forever?”

“The people forgive me!” Gogol muttered, looking defeated. “To leave my home breaks my heart, but everything is changing. What you have seen—the targeting of the woman Katherine, the murder of the countess, of the Havelocks—is merely the tip of the iceberg. War is fought between soldiers no longer. We do not need weapons of mutual destruction to target civilians, and now we do not only target civilians on the other side. It does not matter that Havelock and his wife acquiesced, when their daughter knew nothing, does it?

“I have no real control any more. My position remains but my influence in the Party is minimal. This began long before I failed to deliver the ATAC. We are expending vast amounts of money on nuclear weapons in order to outspend the United States, which is madness. It will ruin our economy, and our economy is already in shambles, but I cannot make anyone see that. My job is to oversee intelligence, not social or economic policy.” He spread his hands. “Soon, I shall become…superfluous, like so many before me. That means either death, or Siberia. I may as well exile myself on my own terms!

“Therefore, when my efforts proved to be insufficient for me to leave, I sought the help of a Belgian colleague—a smuggler and a forger of paintings, of religious icons, and of military medals, items like that—who had always been a consistent and reliable ally. By now I was under pressure from Orlav to produce Locque, and this man wants him as well. You can guess the reason. All of us knew that Locque was not dead, but after running down the countess in Corfu, he disappeared. I suspected that since the Countess had once been his fiancé that Locque was distraught, but instead he took out another false passport and went into hiding. We were able to trace the producer of the passport, but I was not able to find him. Even from me, he hid well, which says a great deal about his backer.”

“Who is Locque working for?” Bond asked. “What is his mission?”

“I wish that I knew. Even Bayoumi does not know, although I think he knows more about Locque’s dealings than we do. If anyone knew, it was probably Milos Columbo who, after all, had the incentive to find the murderer of his Lisl. If I were to guess, I would say that Locque is now employed by a government rather than an individual or any criminal organization such as SPECTRE. I say this because, according to my unfortunately short-lived plants, he has resources that even I do not have—a triple-encrypted satellite phone of impressive strength and range, and with a jamming device that foiled even our attempts to trace it. And a mainframe computer, able to decode missives on our magic stationery, and perhaps even yours.”

Bond lay silently, taking this in. Gogol stood up. “You are tired. I’ll leave you to rest. We will speak again later.”

#

Locque appeared again in the kitchen as Katherine was finally putting the pot pie into the oven. “Stop work, woman.” He gestured imperiously with his hand for her to join her in the side room.

“Not going to drag me by my hair?” was the sarcastic response to his treat as she rounded the corner. He shook his head. She was such a snipe, and she had a habit of leaving out certain words from sentences, whereas she was normally so fastidious about other details. Locque merely settled onto the couch across from the television and leaned his head back to study her as she stood there, arms akimbo, feet planted wide, and that sardonic look on her face as always. He noted in amusement that not only had she recovered, but she was wearing mismatched high heels, one a high pink sandal, the other a classic black pump. The little snot must have been tromping about in them for hours in that kitchen on the hope that he would finally notice! Now she waited as he looked her up and down. Yes, there were mismatched earrings in her ears as well, and one of them a diamond, to boot. His gaze traveled back up to lock with her defiant eyes. She was holding herself a little too stiffly; he knew a woman on the verge of tears when he saw one.

With his head resting on the cushion, Locque merely sat and regarded at her for a moment. Then he smiled gently at her, startling the ghost of a smile from her as well. “Ahh!” he laughed as she caught herself. “Come here, you little ball breaker!” He patted the cushions beside him.

After she sat down he pulled her onto his lap and held her tightly, leaning his face into her hair. She did not resist and they remained like that for a few moments. “Sweetness, I know you’re angry at me,” he said finally. “I know that you were scared. I realized my mistake soon after I left and if you had not warned me, or sent Andre after me, I could very well be dead right now. I know it. I am admitting to you that _I know that_. And I’m not going to pretend that you acted only with my safety in mind, but thank you, sweetheart.”

Katherine did not say anything.

“Look, I can only repeat that I have forgotten what ordinary people are like. I have to do all of the thinking and for all of it, I ended up behind the eight-ball today. I should have listened to you. I admit that, too. You’re shocked, you’re pissed, and you’re hurt and you have cause to be, but I get it, I’m telling you. You’re a nice girl. I get it, baby. That’s finally sunk into my thick skull, all right?

“I’m changing the rules: they stay downstairs from now on and we stay up here. It’s become too dangerous for either of us to venture out, and I do not know which one of them is the turncoat, or if all of them are, or there is no turncoat at all. Whatever else Bernard is, I really don’t think that he is the one. Plus, he does not know that I know what happened, and he is shitting bricks down there waiting for you to blab.”

He felt her tremble, and ran his hands down her back. “I am so proud of you! Forgive me, hey? Go ahead and cry on me, baby. It’s all over with.”

“I don’t want to cry; I hate crying,” she snuffled.

“And you’re bad at it. That’s what I like about you!”

She shuddered, and he laid his lips close to her ear.

“Babe, listen to me. I will not let anyone hurt you. I will not. Kristatos used women, and Bayoumi chews them up and spits them out. Bond’s friend Columbo sent his girl into danger, but I do not do that. I protect my woman, while she is my woman. I was wrong, but I am here, now. I have my head on straight about you, and you are safe. You are worth all of the other women put together. Put your arms around me,” he prompted.

“No.”

“God, you’re obstinate,” he replied. “I’ll tell you something, poet—a lot of my prisoners did not want to leave when I turned them loose. Women like attention, and that is what I give them. Women like a man who is focused on them. Come on, admit that you like it, too.” He took her hands and placed them behind his neck. Katherine remembered her plan, but her body had already relaxed against him, and that warning voice was fading behind his murmur. “Look, if you want to know what happened, I’ll tell you: both Bond and I were ambushed, and I saved his life.”

He drew back to look at her. Her face was tear-stained despite her protests. “I don’t believe you,” she said.

He shrugged. “Fair enough, but ask Andre—he’ll tell you. Ask Arent. Hell, ask Bernard. They all gave me shit for it. You can even ask Bond yourself, when this is all over.”

Katherine just stared at him.

“I have my reasons,” Locque told her. “I’m not working for Kristatos now, and Bond is more valuable to me alive than dead. I’m not even sure, at this point, that our puppet master—who may or may not be Gogol—wants either of us dead, and now I know that while Bond does want to kill me, his employer is restraining him. At any rate, as I told you, this is not personal. If it were, I would force Bond at gunpoint to jump the Mediterranean next time—and I would not put it past Granddad to have a parachute stashed in his turtleneck. I have to admit that I’ve rather enjoyed watching that old tomcat tick through his nine lives.”

She did not say anything, but merely settled down with her head on his lap. With one hand stroking her hair, he lifted the control and turned on the TV.

It was not Thursday, and at any rate “Mystery” did not seem to be among the programming, so they watched news for a while. Katherine’s father was not mentioned, but it jogged Locque’s memory anyway. “Your father needs to be careful,” Locque remarked. “That fat ass Reverend Jerry Falwell has started to mention him on his radio show, and not in a complimentary way. Jesus, it’s a regular turf war.”

Katherine had to explain that Falwell was much, much more famous than her father was, and that Falwell was a fundamentalist, not a Pentecostal. There were different interpretations of Scripture, and thus different sects: those that favored an intellectual and rather unemotional approach were the evangelical fundamentalists such as Baptists and Missouri Synod Lutherans, whereas those who emphasized what were called “gifts of the Spirit” such as speaking in tongues, as her father did, added visions and glossolalia to the mix. Among the latter were Pentecostals, Charismatics, Pre-Millennialists, Post-Millennialists, Assemblies of God, and her father had drawn from all of these. Locque rolled his eyes eventually at the hair-splitting.

“The only reason Falwell brought up my father for condemnation, aside from grabbing a little publicity for himself,” Katherine sneered, “was that some years ago my father was looking to acquire a cable television slot, and Falwell is greedy for that. However, we could not cough up the cash and it went to someone named Jim Bakker, instead. Bakker has built it into a conglomerate since 1977. Those people are rolling in _much_ more dough than we could ever hope to. All my father has is his church and his radio station, and Falwell already has that. My parents are small potatoes compared to these people.”

Locque grumbled and reached again for the remote, trying to find a way to distract her toward more interesting subjects.

“You won’t get my father’s radio show here, but Falwell’s _Old Time Gospel Hour_ is shown in Brussels—we could watch it,” Katherine said evilly.

“If you want,” Locque called her bluff. When she didn’t answer, he glanced down at the cynical face in his lap watching the channels flip as he clicked the remote. He found the _Old Time Gospel Hour_ and warningly paused, but she made a small groan and he continued to search.

“Most television is awful,” Katherine said. “I thought it would be better in Europe, but most of it is crap.”

He massaged her neck. “You are easy to please when I find something that pleases you! Not very materialistic is my love, but you are refreshing.”

Katherine looked up at him again. His eyes were lined, and even tinged with red. Perhaps he really was sorry, but she doubted that she would ever get a proper apology from the Inquisitor. “You know what I would like to see—it’s not on television. I would like to see _Star Trek: The Wrath of Kahn_ before it leaves the theatre. It’s been out for months and everyone has seen it except for me. I couldn’t afford it, and anyway I didn’t want to see a dubbed version. I saw a preview for the dubbed version, and the actor portraying Spock sounds like he inhaled a lungful of helium.”

He smiled down at her. “We can talk about it. Perhaps I can swing that. I don’t think that movie is going to leave the cinema any time soon. I have not seen it, myself.”

“You want to see it?” she asked in disbelief.

“Not really. Star Fleet is just a symbol for the U.N., no? World peace!”

“Oh, you prefer _The Empire Strikes Back_ ,” she returned balefully as he paused at the image of Julian Glover commanding the Imperial Walker. The film had likewise been dubbed into French, and the actor voicing for Luke sounded just like Benoit.

“ _Vous m’aimez parce que je suis une canaille_ ,” Locque teased her rakishly.

Katherine ignored the Han Solo quote. “A friend from college claimed to have some inside information on the third movie script, and he said that in it, Han Solo is ‘dancing at a teddy bear picnic.’ I don’t know what he means by that, and I don’t know whether to believe him or not. That’s a reference to an old song. Perhaps he’s joking.”

She heard Locque’s deep chuckle. “Well, I _do_ have inside information on the third movie, and that is a fair description! One wookie is not enough anymore; a whole race of cute bears oppressed by the Empire will make great action figures, and that’s what making movies is really about, my dear. But if they do geld Solo, I am really going to be pissed off. He is the only interesting character aside from Vader.”

“You don’t like Leia?”

“Meh. Think about it: Leia is the straight man to Solo’s sarcasm, just as Threepio is to Artoo’s comedy routine. No, I don’t like her, although I _could_ if she had any humor. She’s a bit like you, but cardboard. Are you one of these ‘Luke or Han’ girls? Please tell me that you’re not into Skywalker—Jesus.”

“No. My friends and I were into ‘Arthur of the Britons,’ so we were ‘Arthur or Kai’ girls. They showed the series at my college, for a class.”

He shook his head slightly, smiling. “All right. That’s much better. So, which one do you prefer, Arthur or Kai?”

“Oh, I am a Kai girl. Definitely.”

His hand gripped her hair and gave it a teasing pull. “I have been told that I resemble that actor, you know. By many, many people.”

Katherine lifted her head from his lap to examine him. “Yes, you do…if your hair was lighter, and you were younger—but you’re nowhere near as handsome as he is.” She smiled as his eyes regarded her coolly. “Kai is my ultimate fantasy. You’re close, but you’re not him.” He let out a chuckle to say that he knew her game, but Katherine pressed on. “If he was real, I’d chain my neck to his ankle and let him drag me along the heath. I would deny him nothing. As you said, all women dream of a strong man. I’m quite the masochist, if you have not guessed.”

Locque idly twisted a lock of her hair around his finger. “You are quite the masochist, even with me. But Kai is not real, and I am.”

She laid her head in his lap again. “True. With the right man, I would be very submissive. If he ever came along.” She felt his hand continue to stroke her hair.

“You are not,” Locque said, “as defiant as you think you are, little Miss Orgasmic.”

“I have no love for you. Isn’t that defiant enough?”

Andre suddenly wandered into the room, looking lost. “Yes, you are back at the villa,” Locque snarled at him, his brow furrowed because Andre had walked in on them.

Andre shrugged apologetically. “I don’t know what to do with this information,” he said. “Blofeld is dead. Ernst Stavro Blofeld. Bond killed him right before he went on the mission to recover the ATAC. We just got word.”

“Snore! That’s what you do,” Locque sneered, but his tone was lighter now. Andre grinned back. “Bureaucrats like him are not relevant anymore. SPECTRE. Cloak-and-dagger organizations. Give me a break!”

Katherine got the distinct sense, while watching the interaction between Locque and Andre, that she was seeing a glimpse of the partnership between Locque and that dead friend of his, Claus. She rolled onto her back to get a better view of the two of them. “But Bond dropped him down a smokestack from a helicopter, wheelchair and all!” Andre crowed. “He stuck one of the skids through the chair, lifted Blofeld, then dipped the ‘copter and slipped him off, and—” he made a downward motion with his hand as he whistled.

Locque lifted his eyebrows. “Well! Bond has panache, I’ll say that for him. Killing a helpless old man in a wheelchair, poet!” he added to Katherine, and played an invisible violin over her face as she looked up at him from his lap.

“An extremely dangerous man in a wheelchair, who also happened to have killed Bond’s wife!” Andre declared.

“What?” asked Locque, leaning forward. Katherine sat up. “Really?”

“You didn’t know?”

“No, I didn’t know,” said Locque.

“According to Arent, she was shot in the head by Blofeld’s men _on their wedding day_.” Andre was uncharacteristically animated, and Locque no longer made any pretense of not being fascinated by what he was hearing. “Right in the car with the wedding streamers. Bond never got over it. He still puts flowers on her grave, and has never remarried.”

Locque threw himself back against the couch again. He pulled Katherine against him. “It certainly has not stopped him from boffing everything in sight! Or nearly everything.” He gave her an evil grin.

“No, but—everyone is talking about how weird it is, Bond killing Blofeld and not saying anything. People did not know about it for a long time, because Blofeld simply disappeared. Even foreign government higher-ups did not know. Wouldn’t you celebrate the occasion, if you were Bond? Wouldn’t you have a party, hire some strippers, or at least brag to someone else besides the home office? But Bond has been tight-lipped. Why keep it a secret?”

“Bond, hire strippers?” Locque waved his free hand at Andre. “What’s the point, when women are sticking in in his jowls for free? And despite that, James Bond is the least fun man on the planet, Andre. Don’t get your hopes up for a Blofeld sendoff party, or for any merriment beginning with the word, ‘blow.’” Andre snorted, and even Katherine could not keep a straight face. “Bond never enjoys, or celebrates, anything. He just tosses away the kleenix.”

They all laughed.

“And I’m sorry, but Blofeld was extraneous at this point,” Locque added, obviously intent on the subject. Katherine watched him; he was relaxed, different, an ordinary man, now. “There was nothing for him to do in that chair but sit, and watch porn, and grow hair on his hands. Thus, the need for so much kleenix. Nobody blew Blofeld! Poor Bond works hard for the pussy, but at least he gets the real thing.”

Andre left the room, still guffawing. When he was gone, Katherine watched as Locque stared into space, the smile gone from his face. “What does this mean?” she asked.

He shook his head. “I don’t know, yet.”

#

That evening, they ate slices of her pot pie with salad. Andre came upstairs and looked mournfully across the room at Locque, who was wolfing down his second piece. Locque did allow Andre to have some, but he hoarded the rest. “If you put that much butter in everything that you bake and those groundlings taste it, I’ll have a stampede on my hands!” was his way of complimenting her.

“It’s bad for your heart,” Andre announced, after he had safely received his piece.

“What heart, bah-dum, chh,” Katherine answered.

Locque let that comment pass, but after dinner he came to her chair and lifted her out of it. “We’ll let Arent do dishes tonight, princess.” He carried her to the bedroom.

She was tired, mewly, and crampy, and lay passively against the pillows as he undressed her. “If you think your cycle will put me off, it won’t,” he said. “Have you started?”

“I won’t for another day or so.”

He gave her his other present: a small bag of chocolates. Silently, she munched them. He pulled the covers over the two of them and leaned her against him, her back against his chest, to massage her neck, her shoulders, her hands. He put each of her sticky fingers into his mouth. “Let’s just relax, and have good times from now on. Does that feel better, princess?”

“Yes. Oh, don’t call me that. It doesn’t suit me.”

“All right, my poet.”

He poured a glass of wine for both of them to share and they sat silently, she leaning against him and he against the pillows, and listened to the rain tapping against the windows.

“Why don’t you—” she asked, and stopped. He waited, but she did not continue.

“Become a librarian?” he prompted her.

Katherine frowned; he was being _very nice_ to her suddenly. “Punish the man who killed Jens’ daughter?”

This time he paused. “‘Punish’ him how, poet?”

She did not answer.

“It’s not easy to say, is it?” he replied. “Then it is not easy to do. It’s not easy, poet. And why would I punish him at all?”

She spread her hands, at a loss. “Why? For justice—for retribution, at least.”

“There is no justice in the world, poet. She’s dead forever. At any rate, that man is also a father, to a young daughter—what good does it do her, for her father to be dead? In addition, he actually is a good cop. The crime rate has been declining in Brussels, largely due to him.”

“ _You_ care about the _crime rate?_ ”

“Don’t speak so flippantly to me about death, or about what I care for,” he warned. “I kill for necessity, as a job—and on occasion, for personal reasons, to protect myself. I kill to stay alive and out of prison, or so that someone else can stay alive or out of prison. I don’t kill for justice, or ‘closure.’ The only justice is to escape death in the first place.

“And in fact, Jens would never want me to do it. He’s like you—he puts his trust in due process, evidence, etc. I do not, but like him I do want an orderly society. I don’t want people stealing with impunity, ransacking shops, looting and raping and shooting random people _en masse_. No one wants that, not even Bernard. I never wanted the damned Soviets to get a hold of the ATAC—do you think I’m nuts? I want the world to go on, not blow itself up. I would have merely extracted a higher price from Bond’s government than from Gogol’s, or Gogol would have received the phony that I would have delivered if I could have completed my double-cross of Kristatos, but of course, I got the hell out of that whole mess—and fell into another.” He smiled at her, but it was a bit forced, she thought.

“So, you’ve never killed for retribution?”

He thought for a moment. “I won’t say that I have not—I’m just saying that it was not the sole reason, nor even the primary one. I did get my hands around the neck of a man who killed a young woman, not Jens’ daughter. Have you heard of the South American author Julio Armando Sanchez?”

Katherine shook her head.

“Have you heard about the ‘girl in the box’ murder case? In Missouri? That was close to you, I think.”

“Yes, I think I have heard of that case. That was a long time ago. They never caught the guy.”

“Well, Sanchez did it—and escaped punishment. He left Missouri and moved to Belgium, and became a celebrated New Age quack.* Sanchez is a best-selling author. He fought extradition to the States for a decade, and I would not put it past my father to have had a hand in that, too. My father does not care what an ally stands for, as long as he is of high birth, has money, and has influence.

“As it happened, Sanchez was my prison psychiatrist. I definitely think that my father swung that. Well, I repaid them both, for the arrogant prick let his guard down finally, and I saw my chance to escape. I was so assured of escape that I strangled Sanchez, manually—that means with my bare hands. Do you know how long it takes for someone to die that way? It’s not like in the movies. It takes three, four minutes—longer, if you draw it out.” Locque raised his large hands in front of Katherine to show her. She drew in a shaky breath. His brows lifted. “And I drew it out. I didn’t do that for _her_ , but I was aware that he had killed this girl in Missouri, that he had locked her in a box and left her to die, and I did ask that piece of shit how it felt while I was killing him, and I released him, then strangled him again—I made that asshole _suffer_. I suppose that the girl he killed was at the back of my mind, because he was such a slimy hypocrite and a coward and a dog, and I wanted him to die like a dog. More likely I was thinking of Jens while I did it—I don’t exactly remember. But it didn’t do either woman any good. I did it to escape. If I could have escaped without killing I would have, because Sanchez is another charge against me. I _enjoyed_ it for moral reasons.”

She was shaking, and was certain that he felt it. She pulled away to face him. “Would you ever kill a woman?”

He smiled at her. “Maybe I already have.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Based on the case of Ira Einhorn.


	24. Truth

_Well, that’s it, then_ , Bond thought as he lay drinking on his hospital bed.

Bayoumi had arranged to forge Locque’s papers after Locque had walked out on Kristatos after the Corfu incident. That was the beginning of Bayoumi’s association with Emile Locque, but then Locque had disappeared, and probably without first paying Bayoumi. Very likely, Bayoumi had then been contracted by his employer, Gogol’s longtime associate in Belgium, the friend and the forger behind all of this, to kill Milos Columbo for a business reason, unrelated to Emile Locque’s situation—but Bayoumi, seeing his chance, had double-crossed his boss by doing the job personally. As Kristatos had done to Locque, Bayoumi had planted that dove pin on the body—implicating Emile Locque in Columbo’s death, sending Jacoba Brink and Bibi into a panic, and getting London involved in the search for Locque.

Now, Brink, Bibi, and Melina Havelock could come out of hiding; no one was after any of them. No one had ever been after any of them. No one was after Bond anymore, either; he had served his purpose and was out of commission for a while. Bayoumi had done all of this to get Bond to flush out Locque, and Bayoumi’s employer had seized the opportunity to use Bond to subsequently use Bayoumi against Locque. The agent had been a pawn of both sides. Bond scowled at the setting sun outside of his window.

However, Locque as well had been a pawn. Gogol’s government wanted Locque, for retribution, and Gogol’s associate also wanted Locque, out of—and this explained why Bond had been so blind to what was really happening— familial love.

Small wonder this mission was so complicated; it involved emotion, raw possessiveness, even desperation on the part of Bayoumi’s employer. It was simple. What confused Bond was what Bayoumi had planned for Emile Leopold Locque in the first place. Why not merely kill Locque, instead of dancing around him and aiming for Katherine? It could only be due to the fact that someone very powerful—much more powerful than even Bayoumi’s employer—had kept Emile Locque hidden, from Bayoumi and his employer, even from Gogol. And now that Locque was out in the open again, he no longer needed Bayoumi’s papers, for he was still being generously bankrolled, and he was being protected—but why? And by whom?

Gogol was right about one thing—it had to be a government.

 _The Mossad_ , Bayoumi had said. Why would Bayoumi make up such a ridiculous story about Emile Locque’s mission? It was too obvious, since many ordinary Egyptians routinely blamed Israel and its secret service for every problem and slight, even for the weather, but it was also Bond’s only clue. Interpol had nothing on Qasim Bayoumi just as it had nothing on the man who employed him, this friend of Gogol’s, this would-be assassin of Katherine. Both Bayoumi and his boss were, as far as police records were concerned, as pure as the driven snow. Was _Bayoumi_ an informer for the Mossad? Bond shook his head. That did not make sense, either.

If anything, this was the ultimate joke played on General Gogol, and perhaps Gogol’s forger friend had arranged all of this deliberately. Bond remembered the Greek myth of Scylla and Charybdis—Gogol was trapped by his need to produce Emile Locque for his government, and also by his need for help from the man who could help him escape his government, the man who also wanted Emile Locque alive and free.

Emile Locque alive—but not Katherine March. She was in danger, from Bayoumi, on orders from his employer. And Gogol, whom Bond knew would never harm a woman, was indebted to this puppet master who had already ordered a hit on Katherine and, if the rumors were true, had also covered up the murder of another young girl to prevent the imprisonment and buy the loyalty of a certain corrupt Belgian police chief. The agent remembered his meeting with this unpleasant patriarch, and now saw how this man controlled the lives of those around him like stallions, like so many prancing show horses.

Bond passed a hand over his face. After hating Emile Leopold Locque so much, after dreaming him alive again so that he could kill the assassin once more, Bond now found himself hoping that the younger Locque could keep his wits about him and realize what was happening, and remain alive for Katherine’s sake. Now only Locque could protect her from an opponent that the Belgian did not even know that she had. Of all of the people in this little drama only the servant Jens had had the foresight to warn Bond that Katherine’s captor was her only protection against an even more ruthless businessman. The British agent helplessly cast around his hospital room for a phone, knowing that there would not be one.

#

“You have killed a woman?” Katherine could not tell if Locque was simply trying to scare her. He didn’t answer and did not change his weird focus on her. “You have pointed an empty gun at my head. Would you ever point a loaded gun at me?”

Locque shifted, as if uncomfortably, but answered easily. “No professional points a loaded gun at anyone without intending to kill that person if he must. If he is not willing to kill his target, then he does not lift that gun.”

“Well, that’s what I’m asking.”

“If I would kill you?” He shook his head. “Even I cannot answer that, sweetness. No man knows, until the moment arrives, whether he would sacrifice a woman to save himself, or sacrifice himself to save a woman. It’s like I said earlier: if she is _The One_ , he may sacrifice himself, but not always. Sometimes a man must kill the woman he loves. And perhaps he doesn’t know beforehand if he loves her, and by that I mean likes her, sees her as more special than the rest, something that he makes a gift of to the world by sparing her.

“I can tell you that I do think that you are very special, and that I have no intention of pointing any loaded gun at your head, not today, not tomorrow, _but_ —if you were to do something really stupid and force my hand, I would protect myself with any means at my disposal, and especially with my gun. You are quite adorable and I care for you, but I take care of myself, first. You would, too. So, my advice to you remains this: let me do the thinking, and don’t put me in any position of having to make that choice. If you do as I say, no harm will come to you.”

Katherine’s mouth was dry. “Bernard—” she said, and stopped. “Bond said that you—” She stopped again.

“Go ahead and ask,” Locque replied when she bowed her head. “I do not mind. I work hard to make people talk about me. What do Bernard and Bond say?”

She took a swallow of wine to wet her throat. “Bond said that you were a sociopath, without feelings. And Bernard said that you were a phony, soft, unlike him and someone named Kuhl… Kulinski…”

“Kuklinski. Well, those are two extreme opinions, all right,” the Belgian said, and sounded pleased. “I must be doing something right for both of them to see me as they wish! Kuklinski is a contract killer for the Gambino family, in the United States. He’s known as ‘The Iceman’ and he is feared for good reason—I won’t tell you why, because it would give you some real nightmares. Yes, he does things that even I won’t do. I would call him a sociopath,   
_except_ —” Locque raised a finger, “he has a wife and three children, on whom he dotes.”

Katherine asked quietly, “I’ll bet that he is abusive, though?”

“That would not surprise me.” Locque shrugged. “But you see, this goes to show how complicated it all is. I’ve met Kuklinski and his wife. I liked _her_ — _he_ struck me as a lout. She is refined and he is not in her league, which makes me wonder if he indeed blackmailed her into marriage. I could also see that her nose had been fixed, so it could have been broken at some time, or perhaps she is merely another pampered wife of a contact killer in a marriage of opposites, but there is also no question that she is the most important person in his life. He’s nuts about her, utterly besotted…and in fact, Kuklinski told me, ‘Good job on Sanchez.’ He thought that the crime Sanchez committed was sick, and it was. The killing of that girl disgusted him and it disgusts me. Why has respectable European society given Sanchez a pass when we won’t?

“As for Bernard, he probably slaps women around regularly, and yet _you_ scared the piss out of him, and I mean it. He’s stomping around down there, putting on a display for the guys, but he is waiting for the other shoe to drop—and so are they.”

Katherine asked quietly, “So, what is the truth?”

“Oh, what is the truth?” Locque smiled at her. “Look, I’ll tell you something else to illustrate: Kuklinski has a friend, Robert Pronge. Kuklinski confided to me that Pronge is absolutely crazy, because he asked Kuklinski to kill Pronge’s wife and young son. That’s a true story.* Kuklinski told him to forget it, that he didn’t do that sort of thing and that it was wrong, so there you are. It’s complicated. I would not be surprised if Kuklinski kills Pronge one of these days, despite their friendship. In fact, if Pronge was in this country I’d do it, too, because we can’t have nuts like him running around. Killing is a moral act, no less than saving a life, and mostly it’s a business, but a moral killing is a sane act. We are not insane, my dear. Sanchez diagnosed me as psychotic, but he knew that was bullshit, and despite what he did to that girl, neither was he. Kuklinski is not insane. But Pronge definitely is, and Bernard may be—it has nothing to do with killing or not killing.

“Bernard is correct to say that I am no Kuklinski—and believe me, it’s not anything to be ashamed of—but even a pig like Kuklinski is too ‘soft’ to kill a woman or her child, so Bernard can blow it out his ass. Bernard is a sociopath if anyone is—or maybe _he_ is the phony. Maybe _he_ is bluffing, as we all do. Maybe he was even bluffing you today.

“So you see, you just can never tell for sure what the ‘truth’ is. My father never raised a hand to my mother and she was devoted to him, but look what he is guilty of: the death of a blameless girl and of others, and yet to society he is not a criminal. He has no criminal record. I call him a criminal! So, now you can understand what I mean when I say that I am a nice guy, nicer than my father, certainly much nicer than Kuklinski, who probably broke his wife’s nose. _Et moi_ , I like your nose as it is, even though you poke it into everything.”

He smiled down at Katherine, but she looked away. “Do you like animals?” she asked to change the subject.

“Of course I do!” he replied. “I like animals more than I do people. And I like women more than men. I always have. From a young age I was always hanging around my mother’s friends and charming them. And I was always ‘kidnapping’ some girl from the convent-run school and taking her to my tree house. They loved it.” He leered at her and saw the ghost of that sardonic expression again, but she refused to look at him. “I taught them to French kiss—Christ, did I get in trouble for that!” His finger swiped at the corner of her mouth to try to get her to smile.

“I’m not giving you the answers that you want to hear, am I?” he prodded her.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Katherine said before she remembered that she was not going to be drawn into any more arguments.

He leaned his cheek against hers. “Aw, tell me that you like me, just a little bit?”

She was silent.

“I think I got jealous today, when you brought up Qasim.” He slipped his hands through her hair. “Have you forgiven me yet? I wondered if you and he—”

“Qasim makes me want to puke!” she declared, and he laughed.

Locque lay down on his back and slipped his arms behind his head while Katherine picked at the coverlet. “Well, I credit you with more taste than to pick him, but did not know to what lengths you would go to escape. Yes, it was jealousy. I admit that, too. I was stung. I like you. I like you a lot.”

“Who in her right mind would pick Qasim over you?” Katherine snapped. At his astonished smile, she added, “I mean—he’s a smarmy…” She broke off.

He lay looking at her.

“I think I told you I didn’t like you,” she managed at last.

“Yes, you did,” he replied, “because I made you bow to my will and no woman likes that. No woman likes being frightened. I do it to secure a woman’s obedience. Once I have that, as you well know, she is free to tell me what she does like and want. Then I will listen to her and her feelings about me can evolve. But first, she has to learn the rules.”

She sat blinking to keep her eyes dry. He reached out to touch her hair again. “You are so naïve and sweet that I can’t help but wonder what it would have been like, had I simply asked you on a date. But as I keep saying, it’s been a long time since I played by the straight rules. I didn’t think I would ever want to again, but I find that it’s not true, that exotic desires kill the taste for normal ones; now the straight rules have some appeal for me. Especially when a woman is as good a listener as you are.”

“You did not say whether or not you think your _father_ is insane. Do you hate your father?” she asked to change the subject again. She felt as if his hands were closing around her.

He merely replied simply, “Yes.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Believe it.” His voice was very low and calm. They could have been discussing anything.

“But he is your father.”

“Do you hate yours?” Locque asked. “You said that he is worse than mine.”

“Well,” Katherine ventured, remembering that as a part of her plan she was never going to give him a straight answer, “if you do not hate someone, then I suppose you do not love that person, either. Hate is angry love, I think.”

“And you said that you hated me!” he said then. Katherine raised her head, remembering. Locque smiled up at her. “ _Caught you_ ,” he intoned. “Baby, stick to what you know. I have verbally jousted with the sharpest and won. You’re too easy to trip up. So, you _do_ like me after all!”

She did not know what to say then as he laid there and laughed softly. At a loss, she just watched him laugh at her, and looked at his incredibly white, straight teeth and the lines around his mouth. She had no more ideas, so she just continued to look at him as his laughter subsided and he let out a few final chuckles. She knew that she was not stupid, but she had never been able to sustain a lie or to manipulate anyone for long, or to think as fast on her feet as others could, and this man had a mind like a steel trap. She was by nature trusting and truthful, and she was trapped by the truth and could never wield the weapons that he did.

Then it occurred to her— _I never know what you’re going to do from one minute to the next_. She did still have a weapon after all, and it was the truth itself. She fooled him best when she did not try to fool him, because her truth was so different from his.

She would fight him with the truth, then. “I said that because I resented you,” she replied.

“Well, naturally!”

She kept on looking into his eyes rather than allow her gaze to naturally wander. “No, I mean I resented you because I really do like you sometimes, but I hate this whole situation and it ruins everything.”

“Oh?” His eyes seemed suddenly large and brown to her. She had been sure that they were a grey-blue. “When do you like me?”

“When you’re being nice to me.”

“Wrong!” He looked about to laugh again. “You like my forcefulness. You giggled like some silly schoolgirl when I dragged you into the Lancia in front of everyone, instead of holding the door for you as Poof Bond would have. When _I_ earlier held a car door open for you, you ran away! And you were the sweetest, most romantic little prisoner on my horse. Ah—!” he added, because the blood crept into her face again. She could not help it. That feeling of leaning against him while being lulled back to sleep by the undulation of the horse’s gait was a pleasant memory. “And I must tell you, seeing you stomp around in high heels and nothing else was not exactly a punishment!” Now it was he who kept moving his head to pursue her gaze after she broke it off.

“But some of it has been frightening—and ugly!”

“I’ve told you, that’s over with. You are the mistress of my home and much, much more dear to me than any other woman in my life. And,” he added, his face suddenly serious, “this ‘situation,’ as you put it, will be over soon, too—more quickly than I expected. I have received the orders that I waited for, and must release you before long, when I still barely know you. I’m not happy about it.” And he truly did not look happy, she noted.

“Really?” she asked.

“Mm-hm.”

“When?”

“Soon.” He was watching her carefully.

She picked at the coverlet again. She felt again that he was coiled as if to strike. “Where are you going?”

His smile flashed again. “Can’t tell you!”

She could not look him in the eyes anymore. “Will I ever see you again?”

She expected him to laugh at her, but there was only silence. She looked up at him finally, and he merely looked back. “No,” he answered. She looked away again. “Why? Does that bother you?” He did not ask it mockingly.

She shrugged. “I don’t like the idea of just being thrown back onto the street.”

He stretched out an arm. “Come here.” She did, and he slipped his arms around her. “You shall not just be thrown out on the street. I have rules—don’t you know that? _You_ , in particular, need to be provided for. You will be.” His hands stroked her soothingly.

She did not know what to say, again.

“Of course, you’ll have to face that mess with your father, sooner or later. I don’t envy you that.”

She murmured against his shoulder, “And I’m going to have to cough up an explanation for where I’ve been all this time.”

“Girl, just keep it simple: drop my name and say you don’t wish to talk about it. Choke out a few details if they press you, and cry. That will keep people at bay, and will actually help me out at the same time.

“Just do me a favor, honey: don’t try to find me again.” He smoothed back a curl from her face. “You won’t be able to, anyway. If I can and I want to—and I think that I may want to—I’ll find you. Otherwise, get on with your life and forget.

“Some dipshit divorced her husband after I jettisoned her and came looking for me. A married woman, with kids—never again! In stampeding across the globe to track me down, she spread the news far and wide that I was a prime lay. I had worked so hard to cultivate my cold snake rep, and she almost ruined everything for me!”

Katherine jerked back from him. “Christ, you are so arrogant!”

He shook his head, grinning. “It’s the truth, poet. If a man in my position is seen as too soft on his women, they can become targets of my enemies, hell, even of my friends. The irony is, I considered plugging her to shut her up—I did not want to do it—but when she could not get her paws on me again she ran after several of my former employers, and she was such a nagging, high maintenance thunder-cuntfest, plus she honked in the sack like a wounded walrus, that my reputation rose again for having been able to manage her.”

He sat up and pulled her tightly to him when she could not prevent her laughter, and he laughed a little, too. He slid her onto his lap and rocked her as they laughed. “Hey, poet,” he whispered in her ear, “let’s make love!”

She stopped laughing, and pulled back from him though he tried to hold her close. “Let’s do _what_? What did you call it?”

“Don’t play innocent with me.” His lips were stretched into a sly grin.

“What is sex to you this time? Fear, or adventure?”

“Oh, don’t start.” He pulled at her again, but she resisted. His fingers reached up to stroke her face then. “By now you should realize what you mean to me.”

“No, I don’t. Tell me.”

He shook her then, gently. “How like a woman! She won’t say that she loves first. It’s always the man who says it first.”

“Oh? You love me? Is that what you are saying?”

He regarded her silently, his fist beneath his lips. He paused longer than she expected him to. “We may not love each other but we can experience tenderness with each other, and that is what I am saying.”

“Do you believe in love at all?”

“Every man believes in love,” he replied. “I don’t care if he says that he doesn’t—he does. That, or he’s a psycho for never having known love. The question is, do women believe in it? Love is a man’s invention, not a woman’s.”

“Oh, you put men on a pedestal!” Katherine flared.

Locque laughed as his hands stroked her arms. “I most certainly do not! And you are changing the subject, as usual.” He pulled her to him and kissed her. Very slowly he pressed her back against the pillows and she did not object.

“Would you prefer to go someplace warm for these last few days?” he asked in a low voice as he nuzzled her neck. “Marseilles, perhaps? I could get permission. I know that city quite well.”

Katherine shook her head. “No, let’s just stay here. I don’t mind if it’s rainy as long as we are inside. I’m not going to feel well for a day or two, anyway.”

“All right, my sweet.” He pulled her close. She remembered that she was going to try to sink the hook, and welcomed his kiss and his hands. He moaned when she stuck her tongue in his ear.

“Oh, poet, my own darling girl,” he whispered, “was anything that you told Bernard even a little bit true?”

Katherine smiled inwardly and found a coy deflection. “Was anything that you told him true? About sacrifice, being a man, _The One_ making it all worthwhile, and so on?”

“Of course it’s true! I said it again, to you, last night. I’m not saying you’re _The One_ , and I’m not asking if you love me. I am asking you if you have any feeling for me at all.”

Katherine turned her face away when he pulled back to look down at her. “My God, do you have to drag it out of me?”

“Apparently,” Locque riposted.

“You know perfectly what I said on that first night.”

“Refresh my memory.” His smiled flashed. “I want to see what _you_ remember.”

Katherine sighed and glowered unrepentantly at him. “I don’t think that I can be blamed—I mean, once I believed you about my not getting hurt, I don’t think it’s wrong that I consented to do things with you.”

“I never said it was wrong!”

“Well, you and I did things that I never thought I would do with a stranger, and certainly wouldn’t with Bernard. You know that. I admitted to you that you were attractive.”

“There’s more to it,” Locque prompted, but she pressed her lips together. He chuckled. “Christ, I’ll never forget it as long as I live! ‘I don’t even mind you kidnapping me as long as you keep it romantic.’ You little minx!” He laughed again.

“I didn’t want it to become painful or ugly,” Katherine pointed out.

“No, of course not. No one enjoys brutality. Women enjoy domination, not brute force. There’s a difference. Women enjoy ardor, authority, and being swept off their feet. I’m clear in my head about that, and it was refreshing to find a woman who is as well, and who can be honest with me.”

“Oh, you’re clear in your head about it, are you?” she demanded.

“Of course I am. Many men are sick in the head because they don’t understand that it’s a game in which he makes the rules, but she sets the limits. Bernard doesn’t understand that, but Bernard has a big problem.

“I know that you think I’m a chauvinist, but I tell you, whenever some asshole shoots off his mouth about how women like being hurt, I let that fucker have it and I’m not subtle. I’ve listened to women talk about their secrets for years and I know a lot about them—enjoying pain or humiliation, that’s bullshit. Women enjoy a fantasy that is complementary to the one men enjoy: women flatter themselves that the man wants her so much that he becomes aggressive, and men flatter themselves with the idea that woman resists due only to convention or fear, but that she secretly wants him. I take the extra dare in acting it out. And I always act it out,” he purred, moving his lips so sensually around the words, “with a girl who I can tell will enjoy acting it out me. I watched you for some time and I knew you were the one. The contradiction in you is that out of all of my women you have shown the most pluck, the most common sense, and been the most opinionated, and yet you are also the most submissive.”

He smiled at that glare from her. “Submissive? All I have to do is wriggle my hips a little when I walk to make you get all silly!” Katherine bragged, the color rising in her cheeks.

Locque laughed. “It’s true. You turn me on, big time.” He pulled her to him again.

A thought came to her. “Do you ever fantasize about me kidnapping _you_?”

“Oh, Jesus,” Locque replied, smiling, “just try me!”

She shoved him and he obediently rolled on his back. She sat on him. “How about if I tie you up?”

“I am yours!”

She could not help smiling, too. “Do you think Bernard heard us outside the windows this afternoon?”

“Probably. Perhaps that’s what riled him. Although I think Bernard hears voices in his head, and they all sound like gunshots.”

“Well, maybe I’ll tie you up, take a Polaroid of you…and send it to James Bond!” Katherine declared.

Locque reached up to muss her hair. “Instead of my audio tape of you meowing, my little cat?”

“No, we’ll send that to him along with the photo.”

They both laughed.

A pang twisted through her abdomen, and Katherine put a hand to it. Locque obligingly sat up and laid his large hands there to warm her. “At least, I’m not pregnant,” Katherine griped.

He shook his head at her. “I assured you on that first night that you need have no fear of that!”

She lay down on her back, while he continued to press her abdomen. “Vasectomies aren’t always for certain.”

“Oh, that’s bullshit.” He could not fathom what her game was now.

“I don’t want to have to shop for diapers, a pistol-shaped rattle, a black leather onesie, and some mini octagonal eyeglasses at _Bayoumi’s_ for our demon spawn.”

Locque chuckled at the image.

“And the creature would not exactly poop Nutella, you know,” Katherine persisted. “Or fart rainbows. Parenthood is not all Polaroids and unicorns. And you would get half-time diaper duty.”

“The hell I would!” Locque cried out. “That’s matron’s work.”

“You would too change diapers. I would make you do it.”

“No you would not, my savage cabbage. There is no way that you could make me do it.”

Katherine smiled. “You sure as shit would be changing diapers. I would be too busy knitting booties out of black yarn and teaching him to say the Lord’s Prayer backwards.”

“Look, you little gamin, you are never going to get pregnant from me,” Locque snapped, pushing his face very close to hers while she snickered up at him. “My sperm count is equivalent to the chance of a molecule of air on the moon, you little twit!”

“Our child-of-Satan would probably scream bloody murder and turn Lucifer red until you shove a warmed bottle of whiskey into its gaping maw!”

“Oh, shut up,” Locque groaned as she launched into laughter. “If you knew how well I can picture everything you say! Children. Ugh! They repulse me. And,” he added, smartly pinching her cheek, “that’s exactly what you think of them, as well!”

Katherine fought to free herself of his painful grip. “Ouch! Let go.”

He did. “Diaper duty, my ass. First you would have to perform a few perverted acts in exchange, my sweet.”

“Oh, twist my arm,” Katherine replied innocently.

“You’ve sure changed your tune,” he muttered, unconvinced.

There was a knock at the door. “ _What_?” Locque burst out in pure annoyance. Katherine lay silently as he turned his roiling gaze toward the door. _The façade_ , she thought, _is slipping_.

“More news,” said Andre’s voice through the door.

“Ah, yes?”

“You’re not going to like it!”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, open the door and spill it.” He sat back, and Katherine sat up, pulling the sheets up to her chin.

Andre poked his head apologetically into the room. “Your father put a hit on Milos Columbo this summer, but Columbo has disappeared. No one has seen hide nor hair of him.”

“That’s because Bond is protecting him,” Locque grunted, “and the Greek government.”

“I don’t think so. They protected Miss Havelock, and Columbo’s fleet has been operating as usual, but his own ship has been put into dry dock. His men receive orders by courier, saying that he is in international waters, but our moles have determined that the orders come instead from his first mate. The Greek police would isolate him, not impersonate him, and neither would the British government.”

Locque stroked his chin. “That is interesting.”

“There is something else. It’s strange—Bond’s superior, M, is on leave, and has been, since the murder of the Havelocks. It turns out that Sir Timothy Havelock was the best man at M’s wedding.”

“Another wedding!” Locque smiled a little.

“Also, Bond’s dead bride turns out to be the Contessa Teresa di Vicenzo, otherwise known as Tracy Draco, the daughter of Marc-Ange Draco, head of the Unione Corse, a major competitor of SPECTRE.” Katherine noticed that Locque had started nodding impatiently. _He never used to reveal his feelings_ , she thought. “Her death caused our Bond to have a bit of a drinking problem, so much so that he was almost fired.”

Locque waved a hand. “Another phony countess. I knew Tracy. Typical spoilt wild child, a handful and a real bore, getting herself into trouble from which the schmuck-of-the-moment would rescue her. She would have been perfect for Bond. As for the Corse, it was even less important than SPECTRE.”

“M is important, though. This ‘leave’ could be a front. I think that he’s in the mix, and that Bond doesn’t even know. But why? What could be so crucial that he gets involved?”

“Andre, the time has come. Arent has the papers that I have prepared for you. Get them and go find out what you can about M, and about Milos Columbo,” Locque instructed. “My father is the key. You know who to contact in that household.”

Andre nodded and closed the door again.

“You’ve sent him to Jens?” Katherine asked, while Locque mused, still looking at the door. He did not answer her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Kuklinski and Pronge is a true story.


	25. Telephone Call

The next morning they both slept in late.

“Ahhh, Christ,” Locque groaned, “I’m sore. Running around in the woods—I’m getting too old for this shit. Let’s just stay in bed this morning. I’ll send out for coffee and anything else you want. But let’s not get up. Let’s eat breakfast here. What do we really need to _do?_ ”

Katherine said, “I always figured you for a workaholic—someone who never sleeps in, always on the go, etc.”

“I know men like that, and they are stupid. Come here.” They came together again under the covers.

“Would you like a ‘ _Belgian breakfast’_?” Katherine teased him.

He gave her that biting smile. “How about I just scramble you in a pan with some butter and eat you up? Poet omelet!”

They ordered fresh bread, jam, and gouda cheese with strong, hot coffee, but they fled the bed for the couch and turned on the television. The rain lashed the windows as they ate and watched the news. “Not even a mention of you or your father today. Your star is fading…are you sorry?” Locque teased her.

Katherine shook her head. “If they can convince my old man to cop a plea, perhaps I can sneak back into the United States and make a clean sweep of the house before everything is repossessed.”

“Christ, all you think about is escaping.” Locque threw down his napkin in irritation. “You’ll have already made a clean sweep _here_. Why are you so eager to rejoin the cannibals out there? Were you happy? I did not see a happy stripper on that sidewalk.”

Katherine remembered to keep her face neutral but she gloated at having provoked him. “What are you trying to say?”

“Ah, shit,” he said. “You have me flummoxed, poet. You’re one of a kind, and when I let you go, I am really going to be sorry. There—I’ve said it.

“Every other woman I enjoyed fucking was impossible to live with. The ones I could have lived with were dullards in the sack. You fight me every step of the way and you have an attitude, but you’re damn close to perfect, and there’s nothing perfect in life.”

Katherine picked at the coverlet. “You sound like you’re about to ask me a question.”

“And if I were to, what would be your answer?”

He grinned at her when her face lifted to glare at him. She replied in outrage, “You ask first!” But he did not answer, and he rose at last to shower.

#

If his prisoner was hoping that by allowing her to watch television she could distract him away from her by turning the channel to porn or to sports, she could forget it; the only thing he could stand to watch was auto racing. Soccer bored him; any X-rated film made after the irreverent humor of _Deep Throat_ disappointed him; and he loathed most music. However, Katherine’s taste ran toward tolerable genres: jazz, Baroque, New Wave, and Schubert, and so he allowed her to watch music videos or the orchestra, especially since she would turn down the volume for obnoxious songs and for commercials. She also preferred horror movies to melodramas, so he allowed that too, as long as she allowed him to interfere with her on the couch while they watched. That worked well, since most of the films were from the 1960s and cheesy, so she did not mind missing some scenes.

“This is boring,” Katherine sighed at last, and lifted the control to mute the sound from _The Whip and the Body_. She turned from the flickering tube and lifted up her blouse, and Locque wrapped his arms around her greedily. “Soft porn and bad horror only equals…poorer.”

He burst out laughing at that. “Considering that you sat through _Trog_ , that is quite the indictment!”

“I didn’t sit through _Trog_. You fell asleep and I turned it off. Gah.”

“Oh,” he mumbled, delighted that she was sitting on him and taking off her bra. He had come to enjoy, and he thought she had too, these days and evenings together on the couch, letting the television flash as they lay undressed, and sending one of the men, especially Bernard to punish him, out into the rain for takeout meals. Andre had been gone for almost a week, and the rest of the group was strictly forbidden to step over the threshold to the apartment, and so this week they had spent almost entirely alone.

More than once Locque and she had fallen asleep there on the couch, nestled together or with her head on his lap and he leaning back, only to awaken early in the morning, to turn off the TV and stumble to the bedroom, or simply to remain there all night, then have coffee and cold cuts or bagels on the couch as well.

“This place is turning into a bordello,” Katherine remarked, “with cushions strewn everywhere. I think I’ll redesign your carriage house into a harem, with bean-bag chairs and plush rugs.”

Locque stretched beneath her. “I thought you were going to turn it into a Craftsman paradise, like Old Faithful Inn.”

“I seem to remember promising to make the bed, and we have hardly slept in it.”

“Vacuum the couch, instead. That counts.”

“We have not even worn any clothes for me to wash. And you’ve made the men wash our dishes so much instead of me. If you spare the child,” and she pointed to herself, “you’ll spoil the, er, _rod_.”

“That’s my plan exactly, poet.”

Every once in a while she smiled at him, openly, as she was doing now. Sometimes she dropped her reserve and her cynicism and really acted like a woman. Sometimes they laughed together, really laughed.

In Andre’s absence, Bernard was allowed to come to the door to receive assignments if Arent was on an errand. Katherine happened to be in the front room one morning when Locque opened the door to give his commands. She quailed inwardly at seeing Bernard again, but he did not even glance her way. “Andre says he will be back tomorrow,” Bernard reported in a voice that was free of both hostility and of sarcasm.

“He’s learned something?” Locque asked.

The sarcasm returned. “I wouldn’t know. For your ears only.”

Locque closed the door again and turned with a smile at Katherine. She fought to conceal her curiosity about Jens. “Sometimes I wonder,” Locque said to her, “if Bernard is a spook!”

“What?” Her mouth fell open.

“Well, one of my men is. I am almost sure of it. It could be Bernard! It would explain a lot.”

She remembered Andre’s hand on her shoulder while she breakfasted on the balcony. _Has he hurt you?_ She made an effort not to sound to interested. “And if he—if one of them is, you would—you’d kill him?”

“No, babe, I’ll keep him around! I’d keep him close. Spooks are handy.” He gave her a swat that was also a push toward the hallway.

“I’m hungry,” she objected. “It’s time for breakfast.”

“Go into the bedroom, first. You are going to make a telephone call.”

“A what?”

To her surprise, when she entered the bedroom that telephone sat on her night table beside the bed. Locque checked his watch. “Right about now. Go ahead—dial your aunt’s number. Don’t forget the international prefix.”

Katherine hesitated. “But—aren’t you afraid that she will—”

“Go ahead,” he insisted.

Katherine sat down on the bed and picked up the receiver. Locque continued to stand there, so she pressed the buttons for first her country code, and then the number. The line rang twice before a woman answered. “Katherine! Katherine, is that you?”

“You were expecting me?” Katherine asked.

“Yes, of course! It was arranged. Katherine, my God, are you all right?”

Katherine glanced up at the Belgian standing over her. “I’m all right, yes. Don’t worry, aunt.”

“Are you with—that man?”

“Right here,” Katherine replied with her eyes still on Locque.

“Oh, Katherine.” The woman sounded like she was crying.

Tears came to Katherine’s eyes as well, but Locque remained standing over her, apparently intent upon watching her. “I don’t know how much time I have, aunt.”

Her aunt lowered her voice. “Katherine, I have something important to tell you. I have a message to you from someone—a powerful man, someone who can help you. Just listen—I’m going to repeat it several times. You’ll have to memorize it, so that you can repeat it later, but do not say it out loud here. Okay?”

Katherine turned away from Locque and held the receiver close. She nodded, then remembered that her aunt could not know this. “Yes,” she said, then listened intently, aware of Locque staring at her back. “How is everyone?” she asked after a few minutes.

“I’ll repeat it one more time,” her aunt replied, and did so, while Katherine listened.

“I don’t know how we are, Katherine,” he aunt finally answered. “Fine, I guess. I mean, your brothers and sisters are safe, but it’s all strange. And the feds may drop the charges against your father.”

“Is that so?” Katherine muttered. “Well, I guess that would take the heat off of me.”

“It seems that some evidence was seized illegally, and also, he could become the chief witness in an even more important case. Also, your mother and he have reconciled.”

“Their accusing each other was probably just a stunt, anyway,” Katherine groused. “It’s not like she can testify against him, being his wife.”

“Interpol is no longer looking for you—that’s what I really wanted you to know, Katherine. The authorities are no longer interested in your case. You’re on your own, sweetie—with _him_. So, remember that message. Will you…can you deliver it?”

Katherine glanced at Locque again, but he had stepped over to the windows and was looking out of them. “I’ll think about it. I’m not sure.”

There was a beep on the phone that made Katherine jump.

“Be safe, Katherine, please,” said her aunt. “Please be safe. I am always here if you need me. I’ll be waiting for you to come home.”

“Goodbye, aunt,” Katherine husked. She hung up the phone.

“And what are you not sure about?” Locque asked her saucily as he turned from the window, but there were tears in her eyes and she turned away from him.


	26. The Right Woman

Katherine did not speak, and did not read, and did not do anything for some time. She sat, thinking, and soon Locque wandered off to tend to his own affairs.

When she finally emerged from their bedroom and went into the living room, she was surprised to see Locque with a needle and thread, mending a small rip in the seam of his shirt. “I could do that,” Katherine ventured.

He smiled at her. “I taught myself to sew because so many of my women didn’t know how to!” He seemed in a good mood, so she sat down next to him on the couch. “Uh-oh,” he said now, mocking an American accent. “My poet wants something.”

Unexpectedly, she began to sob. She could not help it. Locque’s hands closed on her. “Sweetness, I am here,” he said.

She did not reply, and he pulled her onto his lap and held her until she became quiet again. “I know what you’re thinking,” he said sourly. “If I had just left you alone, you would not be in this jam. You would have gone on your merry way, with Bond and that gomer from the library in tow.” Despite herself, she smiled at his insult of Benoit. “You had a nice life, and I took you away from that and showed you the dark side, hmmm? It’s all my fault! That is what you think, isn’t it? Well, girl, it seems to me that you were well acquainted with the ugliness of life long before you encountered me.”

“Wow,” Katherine snapped back, and was rewarded with his amused glance for the colloquialism. “You are many things, but you’re no mind reader!” She wiped her eyes irritably.

“Oh, you’re not blaming me? You’re not feeling sorry for yourself? Come on. I ruined your plans and you are pissed off. Admit it!”

“I feel terrific!” Katherine declared to shut him up. “I feel like a million bucks.” It chased the sarcasm from around his eyes, and he merely sat looking at her. Her eyes blazed through her tears, and he could imagine that this had been what Bernard had encountered to set him back on his heels, not her words nor even the slap, but the silence of her direct gaze. It was powerful and had always been, even back on that sidewalk in Brussels, and now she had discovered her power she was beginning to use it. He knew that euphoria himself, and when it had finally on that moment through the windshield on that beach in Corfu, it had surprised him, too.

She leaned against him again and they sat quietly for a few moments. “I _do_ like it when you are nice to me,” she said at last.

“All right, my poet.” His arms tightened around her. “All right.”

#

Katherine was dressing for dinner when she heard a tap at the front door. It was only Locque and she in the apartment, but she knew never to answer any door; Locque opened it. She closed the bedroom door to a crack and listened through it. Andre burst into the front room. “I just got back,” she heard Andre gasp, “I came here straight away. Milos Columbo is dead, murdered on his own ship, two months ago. The Greek authorities have been keeping it quiet. No one knew about it until now, _no one_.”

Locque turned and sent his fist into the wall with a loud crack. It made Katherine jump. “So that’s it!” he said, sounding as angry as she had ever heard him. “That is what was eating at Bond!” He swore.

“You did not kill—”

“Certainly not! I have not been back to the Aegean since that morning in Corfu when Columbo’s men shot Claus on the beach.” He began to pace, his eyes flashing. Katherine cowered behind the door when he looked in her direction, but he did not see her. “And I thought that Columbo was the man behind all this. It _must_ be my father.” He stopped, and turned to Andre. “Well, that settles it. I can’t let the girl go, now.”

“There is also someone here to see you,” Andre put in, “who used to work for Gogol.”

“Tell him to go fuck himself!”

“But Locque, he’s on the run from Gogol, too. He’s just outside the door, and says that he has an important message.”

Locque grunted, and Andre went to open the door.

The round-faced, pale, and stocky man sauntered in, clad in a black leather jacket and disproportionate arrogance. Locque regarded him with distaste and did not rise to meet him. He did not take the outstretched hand, either.

The man put down his hand. Locque and he went into the living room to talk, and Katherine could not hear their words. It was a few minutes before Locque led the man back into the front room, and the look on Locque’s face told her than the Russian did not impress the Belgian one bit.

“I was in Afghanistan,” the Russian was saying, “in the Blue Berets—Soviet Special Forces. We killed left and right. We killed them every way possible—by hand, gun, land mine, dagger, anything. Doing God’s work. It was a filthy existence.”

“I know what you mean,” Locque condescended. He leveled that _Now hear this_ look at the other man. “I have not had a clean job since Corfu,” the Belgian complained. “Now, _that_ was something to be proud of.”

“Ah, yes?” Katherine noted that the Russian seemed to want to chat about “work,” whereas Locque was normally so tight-lipped about it. He turned to the Belgian eagerly. “Tell me about that clean job.”

Locque leaned back against the wall and regarded the man with a strange light in his eyes. “I ran down a woman on the beach with my dune buggy.” He said it with relish, and smiled when the Russian’s smile died on his face. “I flipped her right over the hood and left her in a heap on the sand. The only problem was, I had to replace that windshield.” Katherine’s heart was beating rapidly, and she thought about lying asleep next to this man, and him looking down at her, and perhaps smiling just like that, while _she_ lay unconscious.

“But what had she done?” asked the Russian faintly.

“What hadn’t she done?” returned Locque.

The Russian stared at Locque. “I would sooner die than kill a woman. I would sooner die!”

Locque smiled a little. “Then, you simply have not met the right woman!”

The Russian stood, a muscle working in his jaw. He opened his mouth to speak, but did not. Then he whirled on his heel and made for the door. Andre opened it, and the Russian left without looking back. Andre shut the door again and stared at Locque.

Locque pulled his pistol out of his pocket and checked the magazine. He began to laugh. “Russians! Sentimental little cunts. Cannot face reality. That’s why the Soviet Union is getting its ass skinned in Afghanistan. ‘Doing God’s work!’ That from a _hit man_.” He smiled to himself. “Cannot face facts. Can’t even grow vegetables without piling up paperwork. They put their agriculturalists in prison, and tried to impose proletariat creationism, grafting, and millions starved to death. Deluded idiots! And do you know what the Russians produce plenty of? Reams and reams of?” He had raised his voice as if speaking across the room to Katherine. “Poetry!” He inspected his gun.

“Locque…” said Andre. Locque looked up irritably. “Where you are going—it is no place for the girl.”

There was a pause. Andre waited, and Locque stared into space, as if troubled. It briefly warmed his face, but then the stony blankness returned. Wildly, Katherine wondered if Locque was headed for Afghanistan. “The people are modernizing,” he said dismissively. “She won’t have to walk ten paces behind me, or any of that bullshit. It is not Saudi Arabia.”

“It’s not far from Saudi Arabia. A primitive, backwards country, fighting a war with its neighbor.”

“A primitive, backwards country being funded by the U.S.!”

Katherine’s heart beat fast.

“No place for her!” Andre insisted. “You should let her go before we depart. You must decide—we’ll get the call in days, perhaps hours. You must decide quickly what to do with her.”

Locque continued to examine his gun. “I have barely begun with her.”

Andre shook his head at Locque.

“One cannot gentle a colt overnight. Besides, after what you told me, I cannot turn her loose. You know that. Now, get back to your post.”

Andre did not move. “Locque, I respect you. I am loyal to you,” he continued. “You are a good employer. You have principles. Let me come with you when you leave. These other men—you merely pay them, and they do the minimum for you. You cannot turn your back on them, especially not that Bernard. But me—”

Locque stroked his chin thoughtfully. His eyes were bright with amusement. “You like the girl, don’t you?”

“I am worried for her,” Andre said.

“No, you have always been sweet on her, Andre. Do you want her for yourself?”

Andre hesitated, and Katherine waited, her stomach churning. “You will need another western man with you in that country,” Andre said slowly. “You cannot trust those people—warring tribes live right next to each other, and they dime on their neighbors for the smallest grudge. I have heard stories of men killing their own brothers for having owed them a debt, and the Bedouin do not consider any government to be their rulers. The Bedouin have honor, and I would be more inclined to trust them, but their rules are convoluted and hard for a westerner to understand. An unmarried woman is prey, and a white woman more so. This is a nation in name only, a patchwork of enemies who kicked out the Turks and then the British. And I would—stay near her, if you end up bringing her there. She will need someone besides you to protect her. You will be busy.”

Locque regarded the Frenchman cynically.

“And…what you said once, about sacrificing for a woman—I could not live with myself if I do not do all I can for Miss Katherine. That is the truth, Locque. You live by principle, and so do I. If you were to let her go in Belgium, I would stay here and help her, but if you take her with you, then take me as well. I do not ask for her for myself—unless you tire of her.”

“It seems we are alike; I have long suspected it. My mission is dangerous,” Locque warned. “It’s much more dangerous than any other work I have done. It’s madness for anyone to go where I am headed.”

“I am ready for anything,” Andre persisted. “If the woman can handle it, I certainly can.”

“Get back out there,” Locque commanded. “I will think about it.”

Andre left the room. Katherine quietly shut the door. She sat down on the bed, then stared at the dresses in the closet, the dresses with their secret pockets. _There’s no escape_. Locque would take her with him to the Middle East—would she ever return to Europe, or the United States, again? Perhaps all she could do was leave a note in one of those pockets, so that someone, at least, would eventually know what had become of her.

#

No sooner had Andre gone through the door than he had returned. “There is an envelope for you,” he said, holding it out to Locque.

“I’m not expecting one,” the Belgian grunted, but when Andre gave it to him, Locque froze. It was not the usual official manila envelope that he received but a letter-sized enclosure, with the letters ELL handwritten on it. The handwriting made his heart beat fast. He didn’t like it—he resented it, still feeling this way, after all these years.

He dismissed Andre. Locque ripped open the envelope and read the hand-lettered note:

> Bayoumi’s men will catch up with you, and you cannot hide her forever. Soon, very soon, your Katherine will be dead.
> 
> To spare you that grief, make a decision—your way, or mine. Do not become a pawn in this war. Remember what I told you: power without influence is not power at all. You have relied on your own efficiency and ingenuity, which I admit are considerable, but now you are aiding your enemies and helpless to escape the trap that you have set for yourself. Face the truth. You need me.
> 
> You know how unhappy I can make you, but now I don’t need that threat. You are already headed for ruin.
> 
> Do not force my hand. Do not make me reduce you to the level of Jens. All that is required is for you to finally accept that you are, and must be, the lesser opponent. I know your feelings, but Jens is alive because of me, and similarly I will not allow you to destroy yourself.
> 
> I can stop Bayoumi. All I ask for in return is James Bond’s employer. Give me M, and Katherine March lives. Work at my side and inherit my empire, as I have always wished. You have the information that I require; share it. It is _you_ and not me who has endangered her, in protecting Bond and M. I am not an arbitrarily cruel man. I can shield her, and I would, from your enemies for your sake. You are still my son!
> 
> Your loving father,
> 
> Alain Locque


	27. War

Like Katherine hours ago, Locque merely sat and thought. The front room grew dark. When he looked up finally, he saw Katherine standing before him, dressed crisply for dinner.

“I suppose you’re hungry,” was the closest to an apology that he came.

She shook her head. “I don’t seem to have much of an appetite this evening.”

“Neither do I.” He looked down again.

She asked, “What’s troubling you?”

“Sorry, poet,” he snarked, and that was not an apology. “My troubles are private.”

“Really? I think what is troubling you may be what’s troubling me.”

Locque decided to try out the words that he had been turning over in his mind. “Perhaps I don’t really like you!”

“I know that you like me,” she contradicted. “I believe you now, when you said that you did.” She pulled out a chair to sit across from him.

Despite himself, his lips curled up fondly. “And what makes you believe me now?”

She shrugged. “When we talk, you no longer patronize me, or pull the charming crap. You talk to me about things that… Well, I don’t want to say ‘care about,’ but…”

“About what I do?”

“About what you are, which includes what you do.”

He smiled at her. “And what do I do? What am I to you, poet?”

“You control life and death.”

He laughed a little and leaned back. “No one controls life, sweetheart,” he replied. “As for death, a man can control that only to a point. He cannot, however, control life by controlling death—he can only guide it. I do not confuse the two, and that is how I have lasted in this work as long as I have.” He reached out to touch her face. “I am actually a dinosaur, do you know that?”

Katherine concluded, “Well, that is what I mean, the way that you talked just now.”

“Then it is accurate to say that we talk about what I care about.”

As usual, his response took her away from her intended point, so she fell silent again.

“From day one, you talked with me about what you care about,” he added, “and so I talk to you about what I care about. That’s the secret to getting a man to open up, babe. You use a minimum of words and get to the point, without guilt-tripping a man. If all women were like you, men would talk to women more.”

“All women would be tomboys, meander for years trying to settle on a career, make men hate us and ruin civilization, plus the fashion industry would die out, and so would the human race for lack of babies,” she put in acidly, “or so I have been repeatedly told.”

Locque burst into laughter. “You have not had an easy time of it, have you?” He shook his head. “You’re just not marching in lockstep with them, that’s all. Christ. Don’t tell _me_ that the human race is in any danger of dying out! I have never gone unemployed since I began this work, never—and I’ve had plenty of simultaneous contracts, to boot. The more people in the world the more contracts I get, and the more, and stupider, mercenaries there are out there, and the dirtier the work becomes. I think I’ve complained to you about this before.”

“Do you ever think about getting out?” she ventured.

His eyes flashed, as if the question angered him. “All of the time!”

“Then let’s run away,” she said.

He stared at her. For a moment he had nothing to say. “ _What_?”

“I was kidding before, but now I mean it. Don’t go to your job in the Middle East. Let whoever it is you’re working for have your wealth and skip out. I don’t want this villa. I don’t want anything.”

He stood up, still looking at her.

“Let’s take off. Let’s just get into the Lancia and go, right now. I’m serious. I don’t mind being poor, and I don’t want a ‘nice life!’ I’ll take whatever comes. If we live in a Third World country, I can get a job teaching English. I can run a library, or a farm. I don’t care. I just don’t want you to disappear and not know where the hell you are or if you’re even alive.”

Locque closed his eyes. “It doesn’t work that way, poet. What they want from me is not money.”

“Who are _they_?” she insisted.

“Forget it, honey.”

“Listen to me,” she said, sounding now like _him_. “Your father called my aunt before I spoke to her. She relayed a message from your father to you, through her, and me.”

Locque’s jaw actually dropped. He shut it quickly. “That son of a bitch!”

“I’m going to repeat the message from your father. I’m only going to repeat it, okay? What my aunt says he said is this: You have made powerful enemies who will attack you by any means possible. Had your father let Jens go, Jens would have been targeted to punish you, just as your mother was targeted to punish your father. You father does not approve of me, but he will protect me because you wish it, if you agree to work for him. You and I can go and hide, and he will protect both of us from whoever it is controls you. If you take one step toward him, he will take two steps toward you. If you do not, then it is all-out war, and war has its collateral damage, and he cannot stop it. There. That is the message.” She sat trembling, waiting for his reply.

“None of this is a surprise,” Locque sneered. “This is an old argument. Would you like me to tell you of the kind of woman he _does_ approve?”

“I’m just asking you to think about it!”

“You don’t get it. I don’t have that choice,” he replied. “I’m committed to my current employer, and that’s final. There is nothing I or my father can do about it.”

“If your father is as dangerous as you say, then he is powerful, and can help you.”

“You don’t know the first thing about it.” He looked away from her.

Katherine shook her head. “You don’t fool me! You’re _afraid_ of this mission! I never thought you could be afraid of anything, but you are! And Andre is, too. Both the United States and the Soviet Union are arming governments in the Middle East. You’re working for the Soviets, aren’t you?”

His face, when he turned it back to her, had that cold confidence again. “Oh, you are so way off, babe.”

“I’m not so way off that I don’t see that you asked me if I mourned my ‘nice life’ because you worry about me. _You_ feel that you got me into this jam.”

“What I said, about letting nothing happen to you,” he snapped, “that’s principle. I live by principle. I never let anything happen to any of my women. You’re very special, but don’t read more into it than there is.”

She sat looking at him and he crossed the floor to the bedroom and closed the door on her.

 _Oh, yeah_? Katherine thought. She smiled a little to herself. He was so full of shit! He was many things, but he was a terrible liar. She had him dangling; all she had to do was chip away at his defenses. This was war.

#

Locque lifted the receiver and dialed the number. “I have been waiting for your call,” said Alain Locque on the other end.

“Let’s compromise,” Locque said without preamble. “Help her. I would hand her off to Bond, but he’s a prisoner in Cuba, and thanks to you I cannot even give her to my right hand man. Take her into your house with Jens.”

“No. Not unless you come with her.”

“Damn you! Can’t you see that I am trying to keep all of you away from what I’m mixed up in?”

“And what are you mixed up in? You will not even tell me.”

Locque sighed. “I cannot tell you. If you want to hear me beg, then I am prepared to. Are you satisfied? Protect her for my sake.”

“Listen to me,” said Alain Locque in that voice that always made his son stiffen. “The Locques protect blood. A Locque protects blood first as I did your mother, and if she is a woman, and not a relative, then she must be made a Locque. Have you married this girl? No. Have you cultivated a reputation for cruelty toward her to protect her from your enemies? Not at all—everyone is talking about how you are smitten. I would protect _you_ —I would even protect her, but I will not protect you from your mistakes.

“I loved your mother, so I married your mother. And even after they poisoned her, I pretended to be the most heartless man alive to stave off another strike at me through _you_. I thought that you knew what to do from my example. I do not even know this latest girl you are associated with. There have been so many women with you.”

“She has saved my life at least once, in case you are interested,” Locque snapped, “and that’s a far cry from the girl you urged me to marry, long ago!”

“In that case, my advice to you is to come to me. If you come now, then I will let her into my house with you. I will bend my rules that much, despite what I think about cohabitation and casual sex and what it is doing to the fabric of our society. I did not teach you to pull women off of the street, but I will set that aside for your sake. Come home, Emile, and I will also welcome this Katherine, who you say has saved your life.”

“The fabric of our society!” Locque leaned his head into his hand. “What an abstraction, when I am thinking only of you, and Jens, and her. The fabric of our society is lies. Haven’t you figured that out? It’s not possible for me to come home. I would also not destroy you.”

“Emile, all of your calls are monitored except for this one. You admit this by phoning me outright, on your own phone. Doesn’t that tell you anything? I can get around any man, any government, any corporate entity, and any criminal gang. My son. You are all I have left! I miss you. Jens misses you.”

“I wish I had come to you, right after Corfu,” Locque whispered, “but it is too late now. You cannot get around a shadow government. A shadow government is a corporate entity, _and_ a government, _and_ a criminal gang.” He heard silence on the line in answer.

“Who owns you?” Alain Locque insisted finally. “Tell me. Tell me at last. I promise you that I can fight them. Believe in me just once more.”

Locque replied in despair, “You cannot fight this. You would not even believe it.”

He hung up the phone.

#

Bond opened his eyes. He was still prone on his bed—or rather, a bed, for his room had changed. Lifting his head, he looked around in confusion. “Ah—you’re awake at last,” said a female voice. Bond stared up at the nurse.

“I’m in England,” he breathed.

“Not quite,” she replied. She was young and, he thought, steeled, as if she had witnessed many casualties. “You’re at the military hospital in Port Stanley. As soon as you’re well, a private plane will fly you to London.”

“The Falklands?” Pushing himself upright, Bond wheeled about in disbelief and felt her hand press him back firmly. “They didn’t even interrogate me!”

“Or they did and you don’t remember,” she replied. “Lie back and rest.”

 _They got me out of the way_ , Bond seethed. Why deliver him so far south, instead of, say, Germany? Because communications would have been faster, and he would be more easily transported to London. Likely he had been just dropped off without his papers, buying Gogol—or whoever was behind Gogol—more time as London searched for Bond. This mission was a failure.

Bond lay back, but his jaw worked angrily. He would rest, he would return to London, but once he was fit again the gloves had to come off this time. Obviously, this was going to have to come down to only two people: James Bond and Emile Leopold Locque.

#

Locque knew what she was trying to do. She was clever, this oddball, never objecting or contradicting him anymore, pretending to like him, and pretending not to mind most of his behavior. She never even cut that cynical face at him, as she used to. Whatever her true feelings were, she never seemed ashamed now to submit to him. She orgasmed easily and told him that she enjoyed being touched by him. He had lost his taste for frightening her, and he had to admit that he liked her vulnerability, her lack of hang-ups, the way that she clung to him in the night. It was as if she lived only in the present, which he doubted because she was cerebral, brainy, and silent. She was an intellectual, and intellectuals were treacherous. He enjoyed her new unabashed pleasure, but he distrusted it.

There had to be a new plan of hers behind this compliant act, and he was forced to admit to himself that it was a new challenge, but these days he was in no mood for games.

When he entered the bedroom he again saw her napping, this time in a pink lacy teddy that brushed gentle patterns over her naked breasts and belly like shadows from a Man Ray photograph. Scowling, he regarded her. More of her tricks. He tore off his jacket and whipped it into a far corner, wondering if she was setting him up, trying to expose him as a fool after all, by making him follow her around the same way that those muscled idiots had toddled after the dreary clones at the resort of the Royal Windsor Hotel. She was smart enough to play the helpless little slave and evoke basic male protectiveness from even him, but he would break through this façade as he had broken through all of the others employed by the other women he had known. He was better than she was at using words as a weapon, and he would better her at using silence, as well.

He whirled on his heel and left the room.

When she finally emerged, she again did not do as he expected. She did not sit in his lap or otherwise try to get him to acknowledge her; nor did she ask him why he had chosen to sit out here alone. She merely probed his shoulders with her fingers, loosening the muscles there, and worked up the back of his neck. Locque felt his resolve weaken at her gentle, keen touch. Besides, he was tired.

He let her knead his neck for a while, then rose, strode to the bedroom, threw down his clothes, and lay on the bed, shutting her out. Again, she did not react to this; she merely drew a sheet over him and left him alone. He could hear her moving about the kitchen; then he slept.

He awoke when she came back to the bed. He could not tell the hour. When she reached out to touch him, he rolled away from her. So she rose from the bed and left the room again. He lay listening, perplexed by her lack of protest. Then he heard the front door open.

Locque threw off the covers and grabbed his robe, bounding after her. She would not have gotten far in any case, but he was not going to have a scene at midnight in front of his men. He caught her on the long staircase and, holding her by the elbow, marched her back up the stairs and into the apartment. He gave her a hard shove at the threshold so that she stumbled, then shut the door and turned to glare at her. She was fully clothed in the outfit that she wore at the library, and was not taking anything else with her, but he made a show of searching her anyway. She was carrying only the bunch of papers that she had on that night. She looked frightened at last, but she mostly looked confused.

He leveled a finger at her face. “Don’t let me catch you trying that again!”

“All right,” she said, and nothing more.

Oh, damn her to hell. He briefly considered smacking her smartly across the face, something he rarely did. Kriegler had done that to women, often, and at little or no provocation, and for no real reason other than enjoyment. It had amused Kristatos, who felt that such punishments were best carried out in public, probably because he was such an incompetent idiot whose reputation needed constant buttressing—but it had repulsed Locque, who felt that the KGB agent did it out of anxiety, to re-establish a control that he was ever losing. Kriegler often lost control, and Locque worked hard to never lose it. Violence against women did not amuse Locque because it was messy, though sometimes necessary, but right now he was so angry at this little know-it-all Katherine that he took a step toward her with a raised hand.

“I thought I was doing you a favor,” she said.

He stopped, his hand still raised. “What’s that?” His voice was harsh.

She took a step back. “You’re not able to—you seem to be…”

“Out with it!”

She swallowed and opened her mouth, but nothing came out.

“You’re a waste of my time,” he said, and put down his hand. “And here I have been doing nothing but thinking of your welfare. You’re a nobody, do you know that? You’re nothing. I don’t care how many degrees you earn or what you do, or how many strip-teases you perform for attention—nothing changes the fact that you’re a stupid, sullen, ungrateful little frump.

“I _should_ have let you walk out of here. Do you know why? Because your old man has told both the authorities and the press that he gave you that money. Didn’t you know? He says that you were a full participant in his snake-handling routine and that when you asked for that money, he gave it to you and has been giving it to you ever since you ran away from home. Your old man is one cold-hearted bastard, do you know that?

“Then, you were seen at Qasim’s, partying with the beautiful people, corroborating in the minds of many people your father’s story, not yours. Plus, your life is in danger—that’s what the Russian told me, though I really didn’t need his ‘help.’ My former employer wants to put a plug in you to strike at me. To strike at _me_ , you little bitch, because of how well I have been treating you! You are really in a lot of trouble, sweetheart. The feds have issued a subpoena for your testimony, and you have not returned to the States. That makes you look guilty. Perhaps you will be charged after all. And if you walk out of that door, the head of the KGB will see you dead.”

Katherine’s mouth dropped, but she fought wildly to think. She felt the blood rush to her face. He had to be lying. She could not be that important to any government, and certainly not to him, and her aunt had told her another story. But he could be telling the truth about her father—after all, she would not put it past her father to lie to her aunt and throw his daughter under the bus. She had no way of knowing. She did not really know her own father any more than she knew the man in front of her now.

“So, you’re better off with me, and don’t get princessy because I ignore you for all of five minutes. I have things on my mind. I have to do the thinking for me, my men, _and_ for you. It would be a lot easier to just let my enemies kill you. Be grateful that I don’t throw you out of here, you miserable hillbilly.”

He had said all of this with that blank look that she hated so much. Shaking with rage and humiliation, she began to remove her jacket, and felt for the packet of papers that he had given right back to her, that she had kept safe all this time.

“Christ, what a family! _My_ father never breathed a word to the authorities, no matter what I did. My father would never cast me aside. No one betrayed me, the way that your—”

Enraged, Katherine pulled out the photograph of him with the woman embracing on the beach, and held it up for him to see. “ _Is that so?_ ” Her jacket fell to the floor and Locque stood rooted to the ground, looking at that photo. Gratifyingly, the blood rushed to _his_ face, now. “Don’t bait me with my family. I already told that you that my father was worse than yours,” Katherine bit out. “I did not choose my father, but you made another choice before you ever saw me. So tell me what kind of woman is worth your time, then! Someone who sets you up and leaves you for dead?”

“Where did you get that?” He strode forward and ripped the photograph from her hands. She smiled at having reduced him to a cliché, at making him act and speak predictably for a change. Next, he would rip it up and storm at her.

But he did not. He merely stood looking at the photograph.

Well, she had more to say. “Do you know what I think?” Katherine taunted him. “Once up a time, you were very much like me—stupid, and mediocre, though certainly not a hillbilly. Then, something unpleasant happened to you. Poor little rich boy—he found unhappiness. But you did not discover evil when Maggie betrayed you,” Katherine taunted him. “You discovered _confusion_. And that’s even worse than evil to a little bourgeois poet son of a rich horse breeder, because evil is easy to vanquish; it’s black and white and clear. You discovered _ambiguity_. Chaos. Disorder. You lost control of something for once in your life. And you’re still confused by that bitch because even after she left you, you were still in love with her—and maybe you still are.”

He fixed her with a hateful stare. “Shut up.”

“And you are taking it out on me because I am not she. Well, what the hell do you expect from a hillbilly? You chose me, too. There is not one thing about me that you did not choose! But of course, as it turns out, she was not the high-born lady herself, was she? Maybe you should choose more carefully next time.”

He took a step forward and cracked his hand across her cheek. “I told you to shut your mouth,” warned Locque.

She did, blinking furiously. Her hands remained stubbornly at her sides, refusing to put them to her stinging face.

He did not move, but towered over her motionless, glaring at her and holding that photo. He was trying to make her cry again, and despite her resolve her eyes filled with tears. She cast about for a retort while trying to keep her eyes on his. He pressed the photo to his chin finally, shaking his head at her. “So let’s have it out, then,” he said. “You and me, right now.

“Speaking of confusion, I have more bad news for you,” he added. “ _James isn’t going to come_. You are more useful to him with me than you are free—then he can pump you for information. He is using you to get to my secret, and he has been using you all along. That’s what he does—a girl in every port, but you’re even less work because he did not first have to seduce _you_. You have been his plaything all along, you stupid woman.”

If he had struck her across the face with all of his might he could not have shocked her more than he did with those words. They made sense. She tried to tell herself that he was lying, but independent of whether he was or not, she believed it. _There is no way out_ , she realized, and there was no one to help her. There had never been anyone to help her. She had thought that if she got away, far away, from home that people would leave her alone, but nobody left anyone alone, because people did not ignore each other when they did not care about each other—rather, they used each other, pursued each other, and preyed upon each other. It was the same all over the world.

Locque was right. No one cared about her but herself. The right to be left alone was a recent invention, meant for men like him, whose home was his castle—not for her, and not for the unnamed hordes who lived in whatever hell-hole Andre had said they were soon bound for. What did it matter where she went, when she had no more rights here than there? Her right to be left alone meant that someone had to invade Locque’s castle, and society would always choose his rights over hers. James Bond had. Democracy or underworld, the rules were the same. She did not even own herself. All that belonged to her was what little scraps that she stole.

Locque brandished the photo. “Any woman can be a bitch, sweetheart—and this life does it to plenty of women, if they’re lazy, and unprincipled, and mercenary. And here I thought you were someone who could be different! At least I cared for Maggie, once—who have _you_ ever loved? Me? Bond? That granola-eater you deserted? Kai, from television? You’re rotting in your mind with your fantasies of a perfect gent while you snub a real man in the street like the conceited brat that you are. So be grateful that I think you’re nothing like Maggie, because she was a cheap, greedy little whore, and she’s dead.”

Katherine felt a sudden rush of hatred for him, for Bond, for Qasim, for her father, and for the whole world, and it made her find the words to answer Locque. “Lucky _her_ ,” she said toward the dead woman’s photo, and marched off to the front room. She planted herself on the couch and listened. Locque did not follow her, and after a moment, she heard his footsteps fade toward the bedroom.

#

Katherine was subdued the next day, barely leaving the window seat and walking silently when she did, not meeting his eyes, and at dinner shoving the food around on her plate without putting much into her mouth. She had not said a word all day, even in response to a direct question. When Locque finally caught her head between his hands and forced her to face him, she had closed her eyes, his headstrong girl. Moreover, she never sobbed or displayed any frenzied dramatics, or showed interest in any effort he made to distract her. Sitting across from her at dinner, Locque regarded her fondly; he would make it up to her.

Women needed to be taken down a notch regularly, but he had pushed too hard with her. She was a fighter but she emerged from each scrap more wounded than the rest of them had. His insults had obviously caused a massive loss of confidence, because she was a more vulnerable woman than he was accustomed to, and she took things to heart, believing all that he said. Other women would have summoned up even more cruel words to fling back at him, but not this one. Christ, she could be literal, but at least she was honest—he had to admit it—and opinionated, but never uncouth or shrill, and she certainly was not materialistic, nor displayed any of the other behaviors that eventually made a woman set his teeth on edge. She could try to play games with him all she wanted, but in the end what he saw was what he got. He had misinterpreted her natural agreeableness as patronizing and he had been a complete prick, but a man was entitled to that once in a while, and after some soothing, she would get over it.

Smiling at her distress, he pushed back his chair and rose, thinking that he would pull her away from her plate, since she was sulking instead of eating, and put her on his lap to rock her gently while he whispered in her ear. She liked that. She _did_ evoke protectiveness in him, when all of the empty-headed, high maintenance beauties from his past had not. It did not make sense—this ingenuous tomboy—or perhaps it did. She was natural and artless, clever enough to learn new rules but not cruel enough to break old ones. She was an adorable cauldron of needs. It could be that all of the other women he had known had been hysterical, dramatic, distraught, haggling, quarrelsome, but they had never merely been sad.

“Calypso woman,” he teased her, wondering if she would know Nat King Cole’s song about a man surrounded by false sophisticates while longing for the humble island girl of his past, but she did not respond because she was too preoccupied with that massive chip on her shoulder about not being a telegenic, tall, cavern-throated whore like her mother, and like Maggie.

He stood, and blinked…but it seemed that the table kept on lowering itself, rushing away from him. He blinked again. Katherine’s bloodshot eyes locked onto his in sudden focus, boring into him.

His knees buckled, and he put out a blind hand, knocking his water glass to the floor. The walls of the room seemed to be rushing away from him too and he managed to place his knees against the floor. “‘Fine Calypso woman, she cook me shrimp and rice/Dese Yankee hot dogs, don’t treat me stomach very nice.’ Don’t you feel well?” Katherine asked coldly. He gaped at her. “Why don’t you go lie down, then?”

“You—!” He lashed an arm furiously in her direction, and though his hand appeared grotesquely swollen to him it waved helplessly before her triumphant face. She rose, and he heard, rather than felt, his body hitting the floor.

“Well you know what they say,” floated her voice to him. “A girl can take out the trash, but nothing can take the trash out of the girl.”

“I never called you ‘trash,’” he burbled.

“Not to my face!”

Locque watched her approach. “You can go out of that door but you won’t get past Andre,” he bit out from lips that felt like potatoes. She ignored him and searched his pocket for the key. He tried but was unable to close his hands on her.

“‘Me heart, she sick from sweet talk,’” Katherine parodied King Cole’s song, “‘Me feet, they hurt from heels…’” and despite himself, Locque was drifting with her sing-song—she was distracting him and he could not think. “‘Me…brain confused by mind-games/ One wonders if he feels!’” She grabbed the key. Careening far away from him now in a tilting room, she gave him a celebratory leer.

“I have nothing but feelings for you,” he told her angrily.

“Oh! Lucky hillbilly!” she gushed. “She was working in a gin-joint library and going to school when Mr. Mercedes took her away from all that!”

He heard her unlock the safe door, then heard the clicking of the combination. Clever girl—she was a clever girl, all right. Sneaky little spy. He heard the door of the safe click open. “You didn’t use enough of the elixir,” he warned her. “You did not take my weight into account, and I don’t keep enough on hand for you to finish me. It’s already ebbing—”

“I wouldn’t _kill_ you!” She sounded genuinely shocked. With an outraged glance at him, she took the papers from the safe and spread them on the table. How full of surprises she was—so she would leave him alive?

“Why not?” he goaded her, buying time, and trying to regather his thoughts. She ignored him, riffling through the papers. “Oh, go ahead, then—look at it. Christ, like it matters what _you_ know. What you want to see is in the blue folder. Look at it. Go ahead.” He could not sit up yet, but he smiled a little, feeling nauseated and fighting it.

She was looking in the blue folder, and the color visibly drained from her face. When she looked at him again, her eyes were wide and dark, and her chest rose and fell with her quick breath. “So, now you know,” Locque taunted her from his place on the floor. She did not reply. “Holy shit, little American! You did not guess? With the head of the KGB barking down my snorkel—doesn’t it make sense? Who _else_ would hire a bastard like me?”

She made a small sound in her throat, but still did not answer.

He pulled himself up to sit, massaging his throbbing temples. “Now—who has discovered confusion?” He leaned his forehead against his knees and saw her shudder. “Katherine, if you know what is good for you, you will stay right where you are until I can get to my feet. Don’t move. If you run out that door, Andre or Bernard will catch you and then I promise, I _will_ smack you around until you see stars. And don’t put those papers away. In a moment I’ll destroy them, as I should have done before dinner—and then you and I are going to have a little talk. I obviously underestimated you, but do not disobey me.” He rubbed his eyes.

“These papers are phony!” she said, but weakly. It made him roll his head to one side to regard her with a small smile. The drug was already wearing off. She must have mistaken it for the one that he had used on her, which had knocked her out for hours, but this was only to be used for a quick getaway. In another minute he would be able to stand.

She glanced again at the door, and seemed to be weighing her options. “Go ahead and try,” he taunted. “You can only hope that I’d be the only one to lay a hand on you. Andre’s pretty keen to get in your pants, although I think he’s eating dinner right now, which means that Bernard is out there. Bernard would not be able to resist. Poor psycho—I don’t want to have to shoot him in the head.”

She remained where she was. He could not figure her out. She was smart enough to realize that without a long-range plan on her part, he could punish her for this; why did she want to provoke him?

At length he managed to stand, massaging his neck. “Christ. You have a lot to learn. Delivering a drug is not like in the movies. Swallowing some of this is not as effective as giving it intravenously, and each drug is different. Use a syringe next time.” He walked slowly up to her.

“Don’t…” she pleaded as she flinched.

“I won’t hurt you,” he said, taking her by the wrists. “But you are going to sit down now and write a letter to your friend James Bond on his special stationery.” With the force of his hand on her elbow, he plunked her down at the table. He retrieved the paper, and a pen. “You see, I know your secrets too, my dear. Remember, I taught myself to sew. Where do you think all those little pockets came from? Do you think all of those party girls sewed them? I’ve been on to you the whole time. But lovers should never keep things from each other, don’t you agree?” He slipped the pen into her hand and gave her a hard look. “I am going to allow you to choose your words, Katherine. Be honest. Tell James what you really think he should do now.”

She hesitated, then wrote on the paper while he rubbed the bridge of his nose. His glasses had been bent slightly by his fall, and he bent them back into shape and put them on again. She threw down the pen and sat staring off into the distance. He took the paper and read what she had written.

Nodding his approval, he added, “I think that we should deliver this one directly to Bond, don’t you? The satellite does not easily pick up sentences—and you’re free verse, not haiku. Did you know that, poet?” She did not reply. He took some papers from the folder and stuffed them and her letter into the envelope, then strode to the door and opened it, and handed it to Bernard, who took an extra moment to leer at a tearful Katherine through the door. Locque threw it shut.

When Locque turned from the door, he did not see that Andre had come to the door himself and was opening it again, just a crack. Andre stood watching as the Belgian walked up to Katherine and loomed over her. Katherine put her elbows on the table and leaned her forehead into her hands, not really caring what would happen to her now.

Under Andre’s covert gaze, Locque seized the folder and took the papers from it. He put them in the fireplace and lit them. “Careless of me! Well, this won’t happen again. Women are nosy. Aren’t they? And _you’re_ downright meddlesome.”

Katherine still did not respond. After the papers had burned he walked up to her again. She flinched when his hand touched her shoulder. “Stand up and look at me.” Like a robot she did as she was told, and he smiled down at her at her ashen face. He held her out at arm’s length and gave her a humorous perusal, then a shake. “Wow, Katherine,” he mocked her, adopting an American accent, “are you that jealous of Maggie Evans?”

She blinked, and he began to laugh. His laughter increased when her jaw dropped. She shoved him, then, with all of her might. He watched, amused, as she lashed out at him with her fists, not pummeling him helplessly like a woman, but trying to throw punches like a man. She could not reach his face, so she struck his chest, and hurt her knuckles much more than she hurt him. He laughed and caught her arms without much effort at all, so she tried to kick him. “You are quick!” he remarked, and stooped low to pull her against his chest. “Stop, Katherine, stop.” Then she tried to stomp on his instep, so he lifted her clear off the floor, trapping her legs between his. “Hey. Stop it.”

She flailed, but with less resolve.

“Stop, Katherine. Katherine, stop it,” he said, and she was so stunned to realize that he had been saying her name that she did stop struggling. He put her down. She stood looking away from him as he held her tightly. “All right—I deserved that,” he said in her ear. “Do you want to know something, safe cracker? I think that we should go into the bedroom and empty that closet. Throw away every scrap of clothing that is not yours. The shoes as well. There is no room for any woman but you.”

She did not say anything.

“No? You may throw the dresses at me, if you like. J. Edgar Hoover is dead, after all.”

“Leave me alone,” she husked. She dissolved into humiliated tears.

“Christ, if you don’t do everything backwards!” Locque exclaimed. “I expected this weeks ago, and you didn’t make a move. Then I let down my guard and you outsmarted me. That’s a first, poet! We’re even. Let’s make peace?”

“No.”

He brightened. “Then let’s make war! I surrender this time. I mean it.” When she still did not respond, he bent one knee to lower himself and look up into her face. His fingers chased the tears running down her face. “Look at me. I am on my _fucking knees_ , baby. Choose my punishment. I am yours.” He lifted her and carried her to the bedroom.

Andre quietly closed the door again.

#

Back on his hotel bed in London, Bond tore open the envelope. It was heavier that it should have been, for it also contained three photographs, in color. The first was of a young Emile Leopold Locque. Bond recognized him as the award-winning poet from the newspaper clipping, perhaps a few years later. To no surprise to Bond, this Locque embraced a woman, a tall and beautiful blonde of his acquaintance. “Maggie, at St. Tropez,” it said on the back, but he did not need the caption to recognize Lisl.

The second did not really surprise him either, but it was interesting: a photograph of Alain Locque standing with Aris Kristatos on the deck of a ship. It rather resembled Kristatos’ ship, and the photo appeared to have been taken recently, perhaps just before the sinking of the _St. Georges_ with the ATAC aboard, which had started all of this intrigue. Kristatos, of course, was wearing that infernal King’s Medal.

The third photograph also showed a man and a woman, and to his astonishment Bond recognized her, too. He stared at the photograph, unable to believe it. This, _this_ could not be true.

Kristatos killing Ferrara, he could believe. Emile Locque bribing Gonzalez to kill Kristatos even as he paid Gonzalez on behalf of his boss for the deaths of the Havelocks, he could consider as a possibility. Gogol trying to kill his former enforcer—that was an established fact, now. Lisl being the treacherous and unfaithful Maggie Evans, that Bond had accepted long ago.

But this… Bond did not know what to think. It made him feel as if his heart had dropped to his ankles. If this was true then everything, everything, that he had believed about goodness and evil and his own judgment was wrong, wrong, and even his very instincts were wrong. If this was true, then he had truly been taken in, and so had Milos Columbo. For the woman in the first photograph, smiling and clinging to a once young and innocent Emile Leopold Locque was in the third photo an older and not so innocent Lisl von Schraaf, clinging lovingly to a posturing Aris Kristatos, apparently on that same day, and on that same ship, as the photograph with Kristatos and Alain Locque. Lisl, the double agent, the double-lover, betraying Columbo to Kristatos.

And at the bottom of the photograph was written: “You’re alive because I killed her! I only wanted to talk to you. Locque.”

Bond’s ears burned, but he suspected no lie. It took Bond a moment to compose himself sufficiently to read the letter, also enclosed:

> James—
> 
> Walk away from this. Just walk away.
> 
> Forget about me.
> 
> Katherine March


	28. Bondless

Bond was drinking in his London hotel room. He sat and stewed, and drank, and it was not a martini—it was bourbon. Over and over, that scene was playing in his head, that ugly scene of Locque running down Lisl in that dune buggy, of her stumbling in the soft sand, turning to look back in fascinated horror as he bore down on her, and screaming just before she smacked over his hood, with her face to hitting the windshield. Lisl, the self-styled Austrian countess from Liverpool, England, and admitting it over one too many glasses of champagne; Lisl, the mistress of Milos Columbo, his comrade and his friend, staging an argument with Columbo to get Bond to drive her home so that she could squeeze information from him; Lisl, cool and regal, cajoling a sweating, losing Bunky to bet a million francs at the _chemin de fer_ table in Columbo’s casino, Lisl—and Aris Kristatos!

Milos Columbo had been a dupe from the beginning, but so had Kristatos, and Bond wondered which Mr. Locque was more clever than the other: the father, or the son. The larger question remained as to whether Alain Locque was friend or foe to Gogol in his war with Emile Locque. Bond realized that he was getting a headache. He had to believe that a father placed his son above all else, but the world was changing. Men and women were changing. It seemed all chaos and confusion around the orderly world of Agent 007 with his orders, his methods, his anachronistic gallantry.

James Bond picked up the phone when it rang, but did not answer. He merely put it to his ear and tilted his glass again so that the ice would answer for him.

“Bond?” It was Tanner’s voice. Bond answered only with a grunt. “Bond. You are to come to the office immediately.”

“Yes sir, Chief sir!” barked Bond.

Tanner was uncharacteristically pale when Bond opened the door to his office. Miss Moneypenny gave Tanner a stricken glance before she closed the door behind the agent. “You look fit, 007.”

“I feel fit, sir. The Cuban health care system is surprisingly good,” Bond replied in a gravely voice. “In a day I can be back in Belgium.”

Tanner shook his head. “Bond. You’re off the case.”

Bond rasped, “The hell I am! I want to speak to M.”

“M is still on leave. My instructions are coming from him. Listen, Bond—”

“In case you have forgotten, that girl is still Emile Locque’s prisoner.” Now he had to remember to include the forename.

“Stay away from Locque, Bond. _Both Locques_. That is an order.”

“If you pull me off of this case, I’ll be on my own,” Bond warned. “You can command me as your agent, but not as a free man. Tell M that—whenever he returns from ‘leave.’”

“That would be unwise!” Tanner barked.

“We will see. I can fight the elder Locque and his son, and if I must, I will fight you and M as well. I’ll fight anyone who stands in my way until I free Katherine March.”

“And would you also fight,” Tanner interjected quickly, “the United States Central Intelligence Agency?”

His voice seemed to clang in the office like a distant bell. Bond froze.

“Locque is working for the CIA now, Bond. I would never have believed it had I not seen the paperwork myself. He’s on a mission supporting the United States’ interests in Iraq, and M’s orders are coming from the Prime Minister herself. The CIA got to Locque before Interpol did when Locque was unprotected in Cypress. They put him in a room and some members of the Royal Hong Kong Police Force worked on him, and made him choose—prison in Hong Kong for his crimes there, or this highly classified mission, essentially a suicide mission. Every man has a breaking point, even him. Well, Locque acquiesced to the mission.

“For weeks Locque has been providing the CIA with information on Gogol’s European infrastructure. _That_ is why Gogol was trying to kill him in Brussels—that, and the fact that Locque had no intention of allowing Aris Kristatos turn over the ATAC to the Soviets. Alain Locque, not Gogol, had Columbo killed before he could reveal all of this to you. Columbo died because he also knew too much about Alain Locque’s forgeries. I think perhaps his death had the additional purpose of alarming us, and of getting you involved in Alain’s Locque’s hope that Emile Locque would resurface so that the father could find the son. There is no way to tell.

“At any rate, the CIA is forcing Locque to work for it. And now, he has begun that mission at last. Emile Locque and Miss March are in Baghdad at this very moment.”

“Oh, my God,” said Bond.

“So, you see why you must walk away, 007. This is not the business of the British government anymore. It is very unfortunate for Miss March, of course, but she is no longer our concern. The U.S. State Department is aware of her situation; I have briefed the Secretary of State myself. I will submit the paperwork to give you an extended leave, which you desperately need, Bond.”

“With all due respect, sir,” Bond snapped, “the United States, the CIA, the Prime Minister, Gogol, the British government, the Secretary of State, and _you_ can all shove that paperwork for an extended leave in a highly classified area. I resign!”

He strode to the door and flung it open. A white-faced Miss Moneypenny stepped back from her eavesdropping.

“Bond!” Tanner yelled. “Don’t be a fool.”

“So, I am on my own,” Bond said to Moneypenny. He took her hand and lifted it to his lips.

“I do not accept your resignation,” Tanner persisted.

Bond gave him a terrible smile. “Then I shall continue this mission as your agent. Thank you, sir!” He turned to the door.

“Do not take one step!” warned Tanner. “You are on leave as of this moment, and if you do not agree to that, I will yank your credentials here and now!”

“Do as you like, sir!” Bond snapped.

“And you are fired, 007!”

“About bloody time,” Bond muttered as he stepped over the threshold. _James!_ He was sure that he heard Moneypenny’s stricken voice.

“Cut him off,” Tanner said to Moneypenny. “Now!”

#

Bond stood on the steps and pondered the note from Katherine, deciding his next move. It would pain Miss Moneypenny to revoke his credentials, but she would do it—loyal, efficient Moneypenny. She would do it. Bond found that the effect was almost instantaneous. His newest Lotus, parked outside the building, did not open with his key. He knew that it would explode if he tried to jimmy the lock. As he stepped back from the car, a young and smartly dressed agent materialized, flashing an ID. Without a word Bond surrendered his own ID, and his gun. Then, the stranger held out his hand for the keys to the Lotus.

Bond held up the keys and gave his replacement a sardonic smile. The keys slipped from his fingers and fell to the gutter, disappearing through the grate with a metallic _ping_.

“Sorry, old man,” Bond apologized with relish as the agent glared at the grate. “One can become a butterfingers in old age. The only advice I can give a young upstart is to mind your Ps and especially _your_ _Qs_ —there’s a good chap!”

He strode away from the agent, and from the Lotus, and from the building with its female silhouette framed in an upper window.


	29. Baghdad

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And war is wonderful, isn’t it?  
> For it’s war, isn’t it, that the Americans have been preparing for and are preparing for this way step by step.  
> In order to defend this senseless manufacture from all competition that could not fail to arise on all sides.  
> —Antonin Artaud  
> "To Have Done with God’s Judgment"

Katherine lay staring in the darkness, until the distant Call to Prayer heralded the dawn. Beside her, Locque awoke with a start and uttered a curse. “I could slit him from his balls to his throat, for waking us up every fucking morning!” She turned away from him. He slid up against her, his chest against her back and his mouth to her ear. “Oh, come here. Don’t still be angry at me, sweet. You know how I feel about you! What more do you want me to say?”

She didn’t answer.

“Aw, come on.” He tugged at her until she faced him again. She laid her cheek on his chest, and he wrapped his arms around her. “You’re so soft,” he breathed, because she was. She had beautiful skin and a thin layer of fat beneath it, despite her petite frame, that made her enjoyable to squeeze. So many trophy women were actually bony, not pleasant to touch at all. She felt like a dream.

“I don’t like this place,” she said finally.

Locque snorted. “Who does?”

“But I don’t like being a woman in a backward, Third World country.”

“You’re _my_ woman in this country.” He put a hand on her chin and tilted her face up to look at his. “You’re with me. And this is a secular government, so stop worrying. As a western woman, you can move about with your head uncovered. There are shops, and Andre will drive you anywhere you want to go.”

Katherine’s frown did not change.

“There is a museum,” he added instead with a slight grin. “There is even a library. This is a cosmopolitan city. And no man will dare harass you now.”

“As long as you’re alive,” she pointed out. “Until the CIA is done with you and takes you out, as they did Salvador Allende.”

Locque blinked at her, surprised again. Her face looked so stricken. He sat up. “They won’t bother! Allende was a commie and the leader of a country, so they had to get rid of him, and you know that. I am just a foot soldier for them. What’s gotten into you? The CIA is bribing mujahedeen in Afghanistan by the thousands—do you think that the U.S. is going to assassinate every single one of _them_?”

Katherine shook her head, giving up. “What are you?” she pressed instead. “One of Saddam Hussein’s bodyguards?”

Locque bent forward to look her in the eyes with a hard stare. “ _No_ ,” he said pointedly, and she was quiet. He straightened, and laid his hands on her shoulders. He ran his hands down her arms, looking at her with a small smile. Then he put on his robe, and left the room.

#

She remained as silent as ever during the day, but at night she clung to him and dropped quiet tears on his bare chest. Locque was delighted with her tidy weeping, and enjoyed wiping her wet face with his fingers and pressing his lips to her eyes. Always a surprise, this Katherine. He even teased her about possibly loving him, to see what kind of a rise he could get out of her this time. Katherine did not answer him, but to herself she thought fiercely, _I’m not going to place that particular weapon into your hands_.

In the mornings, she relinquished him to the Ba’ath Party thugs with a kind of despair. Andre seemed increasingly tense as well, as she knew that he watched her closely. “What can I do for you, Miss?” he asked one morning when Katherine was staring into space over her cup of coffee. She directed her vague glance at him. “I would do anything for you. If you need anything—”

“He did not used to lie to me,” she murmured.

“Nothing escapes you, does it?” Andre asked. “Why he tries to hide everything from you, I cannot imagine.”

“Oh, he knows that I know. There is just nothing for him to say; he is as trapped as I am. There is a kind of mule in the intelligence community called a ‘spitball.’” She swallowed. “I have a friend, whose father was an agent in Iran right before the revolution—he got out just in time as the militants stormed our embassy. My friend knows a lot about the intelligence world from his father, and he described the ‘spitball’ to me: the CIA employs some criminal son-of-a-bitch that everyone wants to arrest, or execute, and who it has no intention of safely extracting once his mission is done. The CIA will send this man into danger but won’t save his life, and the man doesn’t want to be in CIA custody again, either—or in Interpol’s, or anyone else’s.” Tears brimmed in her eyes again. “So he is a free agent, but expendable. Most of these spitballs die in the course of their jobs, and many are killed before they can finish it, in which case the CIA just finds another one, but one way or another they all end up dead.”

“Not all, Miss. I’ve heard that a few escape. They get away from both the CIA’s enemies and the CIA, too,” Andre reassured her. “Some escape and go into hiding again.”

Katherine fixed him with an impatient stare. “Oh, really? Name _one_. Do you know any?”

Andre did not answer.

“There is something that you can do for me, Andre,” she continued. “I’ve been wanting to ask you this since we came here, but I did not know how to. I would ask _him_ if I thought he would listen to me, but he pretends that he’ll get out of this somehow—as you just assured me.” She pushed her half-eaten breakfast away.

“What is it?”

Katherine rose to look Andre square in the eyes. “I do not want to watch Emile Locque die. I don’t want to see what happens, or to see his dead body afterward. Do you understand?” Andre nodded. “I’m so afraid, every day, that it will be today, and that I will have to see it. I can’t stand the thought of it. But it’s all I can think about, and it’s going to drive me crazy!” She put her hand to her face.

“Yes, Miss, I promise you,” Andre said quickly. “I will spare you that. All along I have planned to keep you away from what is to come. I won’t fail you.” He actually took her by the shoulders, when he would never have dared to touch her with Locque nearby. She was not looking at him. “Believe me, I am on your side, Miss Katherine. I always have been.”

“Thank you,” she whispered, wiping at her tears. “And please bring the car around. I will do some shopping, I think.”

Andre nodded in approval. “It will get your mind off things.” He left the room.

When she was sure that she was alone, she took out the piece of paper in her sleeve and looked at it. Andre would drive her anywhere, but she could not trust him. Hakim, the guard, had found the address for her; she knew better than to ask Maarifah, their housekeeper and cook, who was a traditional Muslim woman, kind but eagle-eyed and very protective of Katherine, and who would never have given her a man’s address without notifying Locque.

> _Mustafa_ _Al-Basri – ask for his sister, Saja Waheed_
> 
> _Mansour neighborhood (NW Baghdad)_
> 
> _Al-_ _Basri Bakery (near the Baghdad High School for Girls)_
> 
> _Ask for Al-Sab’awi Street, just off Abu Jafaar Mansour (a major street)_
> 
> _Call me, or ask a woman or a family if you get lost – Hakim_

Katherine found the bakery. Inside, she was confronted by the mouth-watering smells of hot pastry, coffee, cardamom, and bread. There were customers, mostly female, some covered in hijab, a few in western clothes. They smiled at her and so did the man at the counter. “I am here to see a classmate from school—Saja,” Katherine almost whispered.

His smiling expression did not change. She was ushered into the back, which was the living quarters for a family, and then into the back of the living quarters which was for the women, for privacy. When Saja entered, Katherine was surprised to see that she was even younger than herself. “Mustafa greets you through me,” the woman said, and gave her a brief kiss on both cheeks. She indicated the upholstered couch, and both sat. “You are far from home!”

“Yes,” Katherine replied, suddenly wondering where her home was.

Though younger, Saja exuded a confidence that Katherine envied. She was pleasant and graceful, with long chestnut curls and a willowy figure. She poured tea and gazed at Katherine with deep, solemn eyes. _This is someone I can trust_ , Katherine realized.

“No, don’t cry. My dear!” Saja gasped, and Katherine dragged a handkerchief to her eyes. This country seemed to never have Kleenix anywhere. “What is he mixed up in—your young man? Mustafa suspects the Directorate Four—the Iraqi Secret Service.”

“Is that the _Mukhabarat_?” Katherine asked. “I learned that name from one of the servants. That’s what I suspect.”

“Yes. There are several names for it— _Jihaz Al-Mukhabarat Al-Amma,_ Party Intelligence—they are all one and the same organization.” Saja shook her head. “Your Emile Locque is in trouble, real trouble, Katherine! And you with him.”

“He does not do it willingly,” she breathed.

“Many do not. But those who do—they are the most dangerous of all.”

They both fell silent, and a door slammed in the interior of the house. Saja turned in expectation.

He looked the same, but perhaps thinner, and he leaned against the frame and regarded Katherine with utter disbelief. She thought that he looked older though, for his face was more lined than she remembered it. “Katherine,” he said, “I can’t believe it.” He stepped forward and stretched out a hand. She took it, and did not rise; this was Mustafa’s country and he would not give her a hug as he had to all of his female friends in college. That he, a man, shook her hand at all was regarded as liberal by some.

“Thank you for your letter,” she told him. “My only hope now is in knowing you.”

Defying convention now, he sank to the couch on the opposite side of her from Saja. “And you have guessed that I am in the Resistance, Katherine. Yes, I can help you. I can tell you that Locque indeed works for the _Mukhabarat_ and is an expendable pawn. Our organization is not powerful but it has arms into every major city in Iraq.”

“I did not know that you were in the Resistance,” Katherine replied. “I came to you because you are the only friend that I have in this county. Well—and Andre, I think.”

“Do not trust him,” Mustafa replied. “Do not breath a word of what I am about to tell you to anyone.” And at this, Saja stood up and left the room. He waited a moment, then leaned close—too close for propriety, indicating that they were entirely alone. “We need you to do something for us.” His hand clasped hers, and when he withdrew it again, she felt the small round case in her fingers.

“It’s microfilm?” she asked.

“Deliver it to our contact in Basra. A woman. But do not look for her. She will find you.”

Katherine hesitated, clutching the case. “But…I—”

“You can do it. You must,” Mustafa insisted. “We can get you and Locque out of Iraq, but you must perform a favor for us, first.”

“But, Mustafa—we’re in Baghdad. How am I supposed to go to Basra? That’s too far for my driver to—”

“Listen to me: you are a woman in a Muslim country,” Mustafa replied. “Wait, be silent, and let things happen. That will deflect suspicion from you. Keep this case close to you and say nothing about it. Do not try to force things. Keep it in your sleeve for when the right moment comes. Basra will come to you.”

 _There is no one who can keep me safe_ , she remembered. She had to take care of herself. “Basra” could be a code word, or the word of a person. After another minute, she nodded.

“Thank you,” whispered Mustafa. “Thank you, Katherine. The Iraqi people thank you. I would not ask this of you, but only you can do it.” She felt his desperation. He watched as she slipped the case into her sleeve, which was long and buttoned at her wrist, creating a secure hiding place.

There were three small raps at the door. “Enter,” said Mustafa.

Saja opened it. “There is an impatient husband accompanied by Katherine’s driver and a bodyguard. I had Samir seat them and show them menus, but Locque is wanting to bring Katherine home.”

Mustafa checked his watch. “It’s only mid-afternoon. Not close to suppertime at all.”

“He’s just controlling,” Katherine griped. “He doesn’t like being here. We hole up in the house as much as possible when he’s not at work. I have freedom when he’s not with me, but he never wants to go out anywhere. Which I can understand,” she added.

“You are too ‘understanding,’ Katherine. Would you like to have a measure of revenge?” Saja asked mischievously with a touch on Katherine’s arm. She turned and shouted something to her brother, but Katherine could not understand the Iraqi _patois_. Mustafa got up with a grin and left through the door. Saja turned back to her with a smile. “I just told my brother that there are uncovered women in the parlour and that we do not wish to don our _hijabs_. Therefore, your Emile cannot enter. My brothers will bar him at the door, lead him into the front room and ply him with tea, and there my father will bore him to death with questions about Europe, and your husband can have a taste of being cloistered with the men for a while!”

#

Saja and Katherine managed to draw out Katherine’s visit until the workday was over. Mustafa’s father dismissed his employees and took his place behind the counter for the after-supper crowd. Saja made a big to-do about saying “good-bye” to her imaginary female “guests” and finally allowed Locque to be ushered into the parlour, where Katherine remained. There he was forced to endure more small talk, though Locque blinked in interest at Saja’s beauty. However, he parried the politeness and managed to dislodge Katherine at last.

“I think I was wrong earlier. Such urgency toward you is sweet,” Saja whispered to her. “He looks at other women but enjoys your company.”

Locque and Katherine slipped into the back of their car, where Andre waited in the front seat, and Diaab, their driver, pulled away.

Locque was livid. “I can’t believe what a bunch of uncivilized, backward morons run this place!” he ranted at Andre. “I could not even get in there to see my own woman! Because three other bitches would not cover their own faces—even though they probably walk around unveiled in the street all the time, anyway! Wearing the latest U.S. fashions, Jordache jeans most like, under those flour bags they wrap themselves in!” Katherine smothered her grin. Andre’s eyes sparkled at her from the rear-view mirror.

Locque ranted on, “And today, some Bedouin hag had the balls to tell me that if I had married an Iraqi woman she would have caned me to within an inch of my life! But of course, since I cannot understand one word of their twaddle, I had no idea what she had actually said to me at the time—only until my translator told me—” and he flung a finger at Diaab, “—too late for me to go back and let her have it. So I was left to smile and nod at her like a fucking idiot the whole time while I was being insulted!”

“It’s a good thing that your translator did not tell you what was being said,” Andre cut in. “Don’t put your hands on any Arab woman. _The husband or her family_ can do it, and the most they’ll get is brought before the elders for punishment if at all, but if _you_ did it, you’d be in prison. And her being a Bedouin, they probably would just lynch you right there in the market. And I’m talking about by other Bedouin women!”

“All Iraqi women are safe from me putting my hands on them, never fear!” Locque declared.

Diaab spoke up. “You smiling at her was correct. You saved face. Allah favors the compassionate.”

“Yeah? Well, Allah could have fooled me,” Locque griped.

Katherine shook with silent laughter; she could tell that Locque, despite his protestations, was impressed by the Bedouin way of handling matters. Locque gazed at her in disgust. “It’s a good thing,” Katherine ventured, “that Mustafa’s family is so protective. No one kidnapped me. It sometimes happens here, you know, on the street—abductions. What would you do if some man took me as a sex slave?”

“Have you lost your fucking mind?” Locque demanded. “What kind of a life do you think you would have, yoked to a native? Do you want to have a passel of his brats, be locked in a hovel, and end up eating your heart out while being screamed at by his female relatives? Have you heard some of these ball-breakers? Jesus Christ, I thought they were all silent and obedient, but no! They’re as shrill and demanding as any other woman, probably in part because they have to be heard through layers of cloth!” He ululated in a bad parody of the _zagareet_ , and Katherine fought to control her laughter.

“I don’t think that’s quite the answer that she’s looking for,” Andre remarked.

Locque sat steaming and Katherine sat smiling in the back of the car while Diaab drove them home. Once inside the house, Locque took her arm roughly and pulled her into the bedroom. He lowered his face very close to hers. “ _And_ I would hunt down your kidnapper and shoot him in the neck until his damned head fell off his body. Is that what you want to hear, Katherine? He and anyone else who got their hands on you would regret it, and I would get you back or die trying. I would not do the same for any other woman, but I would turn the world upside down to find _you_ again. Satisfied, you bloodthirsty little tease?

“An Iraqi man would do his utmost to impregnate you—fucking Christ, these people talk of nothing else—babies, babies, babies, Jesus! And God! ‘God’ this, ‘Allah’ that—when I have assured you that you don’t have to worry about getting pregnant with me. And just remember this, honey: no matter what any other man does to you, _I would take you back_ , unlike these puritanical fucks. They’re all fucked in the head about ‘honor’ and think a natural woman is ‘polluted.’ Virginity—what rubbish. I would take your kidnapper’s head and display it outside our house on the stone wall so that these people understand that I blame _him_ , not you. Nothing a man does to _you_ would put me off or make me reject you. So you just remember that, you greedy little smartass.”

He stalked off and Katherine smiled at his back. “Hear him!” barked nosy Maarifah, the housekeeper, popping in out of nowhere again. She was always eavesdropping and now the old woman nodded her approval of the Locque style of lynching. “How he would protect you! You should thank God that you are so fortunate.”

“Oh yes,” Katherine told her quietly, “I thank God every day.” Satisfied, Maarifah sailed off to the kitchen, and Katherine fingered the microfilm in her sleeve.

“And you must make ready,” blared Maarifah from the kitchen door, “for your journey to Basra.”

Katherine swallowed. “Basra?”

Andre entered the room. “Yes. Locque has been reassigned. We leave tomorrow.”

“Then I’ll go pack,” Katherine wavered. Maarifah nodded her approval at such obedience, then—as she always could—changed her mood in a second.

The old woman burst into tears. “I shall not be going with you. My mistress!” The kitchen now forgotten, she swooped forward to embrace Katherine dramatically. “God keep you safe so far away from us!” From somewhere behind, Katherine thought that she heard Hakim’s resigned sigh at the woman’s theatrics. Andre, she noticed, had beaten a hasty retreat.

“You seem never able to merely enter a room,” Katherine teased the older woman. “Won’t we have one of your fabulous suppers before we go?”

Maarifah stepped back, wiping her face. “Yes, Mistress Katherine, of course I shall cook for you one last time.” This time she succeeded into stepping over the kitchen’s threshold.

“I do not come, either,” said Hakim solemnly, now walking up to Katherine. “Please take care, Mistress.”

“And you too,” Katherine told him warmly.


	30. Basra

Locque never read books or watched the news on his own—he seemed to live in an eternal present—yet Katherine came home to him staring disgustedly at the screen. On it, religious pilgrims were beating their breasts and chanting. Andre lurked in the corner, mesmerized by the drama in the act of performing some errand. “What is this shit!” Locque demanded when Katherine approached him.

“It’s the Shiites, performing their religious flagellation,” she replied.

“ _What_ did you call them?” Locque looked about to laugh. “Shites?”

“ _Shee_ -ites,” she emphasized, not amused.

He turned back to the screen, his mouth upturned saucily. “You’re being culturally insensitive,” Andre teased him.

“Jesus Fuck.” Locque clicked the television off. “Some of those freaks were beating themselves bloody!” He looked at Katherine, who was setting down her bag, and suddenly he bent forward and seized her hand. He held it high. “What the hell is this?”

“It’s henna,” she said, yanking her hand free and proudly displaying the reddish-brown design on her light skin for both of them. “A Bedouin woman in the market did it for me!”

“Go wash it off!” demanded Locque. “It’s ugly.”

Andre sniggered, and Katherine replied in outrage, “It doesn’t _wash off_ —it’s _dye_. It dyes the skin. And it’s not ugly!”

“It has to wear off,” Andre added.

Locque let out his breath in annoyance. “It looks like you drew all over your hand.”

“She _did_ draw on my hand. That’s the _point_!”

“Well, I guess we’ll just have to chop it off, then,” Locque deadpanned. He seized her hand again and dragged her into the kitchen. Andre followed to see him seize a cleaver, force her hand onto the chopping block, and bring down the weapon next to her fingers. She and he both sniggered.

“Now, I can’t make dinner,” Katherine replied.

“Christ, Andre, it was a _joke_ ,” Locque said to the man in the doorway. “You don’t see her overreacting, do you?”

“Some women put henna on their faces; what would you do then, chop off my head?” Katherine teased.

“Ah, these people are nuts, chopping off women’s head and hands.” Locque dismissed the entire Muslim culture with a swipe of his hand. “Women need hands to work. A woman’s hand is worth both of her breasts. They should chop those off instead—or a foot. Or cut out the tongue. Definitely the tongue,” he concluded, smiling at little at Katherine. “Maybe we should just do that to all of them at birth.”

“You’re a sick motherfucker!” Andre said as he left the room. With a bemused expression, Locque watched him leave, then shook his head and turned to Katherine.

“I’m afraid that we’ve shocked him,” Katherine simpered. “Andre doesn’t have much of a sense of humor.”

“No—he’s a boy scout. And I thought Bernard was a spook! Andre’s so pure, he could work for the FBI.” Locque grinned. “Listen, sweet, I have to go out for a few hours.” He took her by the shoulders and regarded her at arm’s length. She was wearing what was called “Egyptian chic,” with a long tunic and loose pants, and a scarf wound casually around her hair. She had made up her eyes as well, and could almost pass for a light-skinned Arab, like that Lebanese singer she was always listening to now—Faroush? Fair-ooze? He rolled his eyes. He planted a kiss on the corner of her mouth. “I won’t be long. Tell me you love me.”

“I would,” Katherine countered smoothly, “but then I would have to kill you.”

He actually laughed. “Jesus Christ, shut up, you little bitch!” He pulled her against him and kissed her deeply.

#

The tall, lanky blond man walked through the door and smiled at Katherine. She remembered that smile from the sidewalk in Brussels, and those eyes. They seemed to have changed their color, and become more blue than grey. It was a small change—hair color, hair cut—and yet he seemed a different person. Plus, Mr. Elegant was again wearing a shirt and tie, and it seemed to widen his chest and emphasize his broad shoulders. “I almost demanded to know who you were!” she said to Locque.

He went to the hall mirror and straightened his tie. “I loathe my hair cut this short over my ears.”

“But it looks nice,” she said shyly.

Andre added, “You do look like a completely different man.”

“Agh, I hate it,” Locque grumbled.

“Well, if you hate it so much, why did you do it?”

He kept looking in the mirror and did not say anything.

“I know who you remind me of!” Katherine teased. “Atmir, from the movie _Warlords of Atlanti_ s _!_ ” Andre smiled and Locque turned to glare at her. He began to walk slowly up to her. “Just add a blonde Prince Valiant haircut and a glittery miniskirt, and you’d be his spitting image.”

Locque shoved a fist behind her neck and smiled evilly down at her.

“I’d like to see a little more male bare thigh around here,” she persisted. “It’s the cure for misandry. Plato said so.”

Locque yanked her to him and kissed her. “Get dressed,” he said. “Tonight is a big night for me.”

#

Unlike Baghdad, Basra was a lovely port town, palm-fringed and glistening with silver waves. Bond stood looking over the azure waters. To one side was a plaza, crowded with people, and a large new cinema house. Saddam Hussein, the leader of Iraq, was eager to show his wealthy benefactors and his western guests his efforts to modernize his country, and he would attend a screening of _Star Trek; the Wrath of Khan_ with his honored guests. Thanks to Qasim Bayoumi, Bond—now no longer the agent James Bond—was one of them. Emile Leopold Locque and Katherine March were invited, too.

When a distinguished, grey-haired man beside him said that there was no place like the Persian Gulf, Bond replied, “I am afraid that I was reminiscing about the Mediterranean.”

Bond chuckled and surveyed the crowd again. He could see no one resembling Locque or Katherine. “I have come to confront a snake. And to look for a friend, yes, who is a woman.”

The man nodded and quipped humorously, “Always there is a snake in the garden! But he will be in disguise, my friend.” Bond knew that the man meant it only to be witty, but as the agent surveyed the crowd again he realized how apt the analogy was, for a tall, blond stranger standing on the steps was waggling a finger in the air.

As Bond watched, this man pointed to the veiled woman beside him who had her back to the agent. Alerted by the hand on her shoulder, she turned slowly and Bond recognized Katherine, lovely and elegant in a _shalwar kameez_ and with a long, loose veil pinned to the back of her head. The azure and pink costume set off her eyes and made her skin glow, and the pearl jewelry gave her an added brilliance. She truly was beautiful. He watched in stunned admiration as she gracefully descended the steps to greet him, trailed by a tall and startlingly handsome man with features that Bond recognized, and yet did not. This was an older version of that newspaper photograph, his cool eyes, his lips, his light hair, Locque the poet, the victim, the fraud, the murderer.

“Hello, James. ‘What does thee wish?’” Katherine teased him as she extended her hands. Bond recognized the line as the one spoken by the Quaker librarian in _The Philadelphia Story_.

He pressed his lips to her hand. “It is good to see you again, Katherine.” His eyes searched hers. “And I’m relieved to find you well.”

“Of course she’s well,” Locque snapped.

Bond’s fingers found the simple gold band on her left hand, and looked askance at her. Then he turned to Locque. “Could you give us a few moments alone, please?”

“Certainly,” Locque replied. He turned and nodded to Andre across the plaza, then walked over to join him.

“I hate to give credit to Bayoumi for anything, but I’m glad that he delivered my message to you,” Katherine said.

Bond grinned tightly. “I wouldn’t credit him too much, but he did deliver it.” The air was hot, so he daubed his chin lightly with his handkerchief, then stuffed it back into his breast pocket—where he could feel the concealed pistol, another gift from Bayoumi, who as it turned out hated Saddam Hussein as much as Bond did. The agent lifted Katherine’s hand again, making the ring sparkle. “Why, Katherine?”

“It had to be done, James,” she explained gently. “This is still a Muslim country. It is better for me to be married. In some sections of the country we would be imprisoned for living together.”

“And you are not imprisoned now?” he asked her.

“I think we’ve both achieved a détente,” she said wryly. “He no longer resents me for having dug up some human feeling in him, and I no longer resent him for not being able to hate him.”

“Oh, Katherine. Don’t just give up like this.”

“James,” she said pointedly, “it’s _not_ _that bad_.”

Bond shook his head at her. “It’s as bad as it could be.”


	31. Go with God

They stayed for the film premier, the Iraqi premier of _Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan_. Bond stood and Locque stood listening too as the Iraqi President, Saddam Hussein, gave a florid speech at the top of the steps to the theatre. Then the assembled dignitaries and guests were let inside to their assigned velvet seats. Locque and Bond were seated on either side of Katherine, with Andre next to Locque.

“Quite the American ally, eh?” Locque nodded as the President settled himself importantly on the throne that had been set up in the third row. On either side of him sat beautiful women, presumably a wife, reportedly many mistresses, and along the sides of the theatre stood armed guards, Ba’athists.

Bond replied, “Neither my country nor the United States created Saddam Hussein.”

“No, but it is very convenient for him to be in power,” replied Locque, “considering the present government of Iran.”

Katherine scanned the crowd. She did not see how any Iraqi spy was going to meet up with her here to take the microfilm. “I must make a trip to the ladies’ room,” she alibied blindly in an apologetic voice. “Will they let me?” She nodded toward the armed guards.

“Of course, love,” Locque replied. “When you stand up, someone will signal the President and he will turn to you. Bow to him, and he’ll wave you off.”

Katherine stood. Her face was flaming when everyone, including Saddam Hussein, looked at her. He lowered her head and then her shoulders, and the President gave her a giant smile at nodded to her. She had expected it to be ugly and smarmy, but it was a handsome smile, even gracious. Katherine left her seat.

The usher at the back door opened it for her, and she glided across the ornate, palatial lobby. Chandeliers winked above her in the lights, throwing prisms. There was a young, sophisticated looking young woman in a uniform and a pillbox hat behind the glass of the admission booth tallying money. As Katherine watched she looked up and smiled, but then returned to her work. Disappointed but not very surprised, Katherine turned around and looked for the appropriate door.

The ladies’ room was palatial too, gilded in gold and pink and white. Had she worn anything simpler, she would have looked like a pauper. Katherine paused before the large mirror to gaze at herself, and a female form clad in a black _abaya_ rose up from the corner where she had been squatting like a beggar. Katherine froze as the wraith flitted toward her.

“ _Alsadqa_ ,” pleaded the woman, holding out her hand. “Alms.”

Katherine paused. This was too obvious. “I have no money,” she said in English.

“Help a poor old woman,” said the voice in clear English from the layers of black cloth.

“No money,” Katherine said as she backed away, now sure this was her contact. She fumbled clumsily with her long sleeve.

The woman placed two strong, cold hands on Katherine’s arm. “ _La_ , _la_!” she hissed—No, no—and quickly released one hand to show the container of microfilm. Her hand and it disappeared into the _abaya_. “ _Adhhab alan_.”

“But—how…” Katherine said.

The figure made waving motions at her with both hands. Both hands were now empty. “Go, go!” she said in English. “Go, my dear. _Shukraan_. The Iraqi people thank you. _Adhhab mae allah_ —go with God, little one.”

#

When Katherine was heading toward the doors to the cinema to go back inside, she encountered Bond coming out. “I shall rejoin you in a moment,” James told her, and for extra measure, he imitated the James Stewart character from _The Philadelphia Story_ , “‘Dost thou have a washroom?’” At Katherine’s pointed finger indicated the doorway across the lobby, he continued the quote: “‘Thank thee.’”

“Get going, you idiot!” Katherine laughed.

Bond gave her a roughish grin then and continued walking. It startled her. For the first time, she wondered about Locque joking about Bond making her one of his conquests. It did not seem to be a forced smile, but perhaps it was, for her benefit.

She went back into the theatre and found her seat. After a few minutes, Bond rejoined them, too.

Katherine was absorbed the _The Wrath of Khan_ and though he and Andre whispered during it, Locque sat rapt, to her surprise. “This is better than the first sequel,” said Andre.

“Oh, this is a sequel to the sequel?” smirked Locque. But they both sat entranced as Captain Kirk, disregarding the ladder rungs, slid down the ladder to get to a dying Spock, who had just saved the ship.

“This is much more than a science fiction flick,” said Andre.

“Oh—damn, Claus,” breathed Locque, and Katherine did not recognize his voice, it held so much pain.

She and Bond exchanged a brief glance.

#

After the film, the Iraqi President made a another, mercifully shorter speech commending the film and the cinema’s owner, and he had the entire staff stand and endure the polite applause. After that there were cocktails and mixing, as if at an art opening. Bond sensed something building. He did not expect Katherine to come away with him tonight, but he sensed no urgency in her, no plans. She glided comfortably on the arm of Locque, and he didn’t like it.

Finally, Katherine separated from her husband and approached Bond where he was standing alone, watching the Iraqi President boast to a seemingly rapt crowd one of his many tall tales of personal valor. “Locque wants to talk to you,” she told Bond.

“I wish to talk to _you_ ,” Bond replied. “Katherine, I have come to take you away from this country, and from him.”

“You would rescue me?”

“I would ask you to rescue yourself.”

“I know how things look,” she said, “but you know I’m not a fool and you know I’m not a slave. Have you considered that he might actually need me?”

Bond could not help letting out his breath in disgust. “Katherine, that is so clichéd.”

She gave him a knowing look. “As Thomas Mann also said, aren’t most men?”

He had to acknowledge her riposte with a grudging nod. “All right. But don’t make excuses—don’t _you_ make excuses for him.”

“I’m not making excuses. They are observations. In another age, Locque might have been…a pirate, perhaps. Like Sir Frances Drake!”

Bond grumbled, “Sir Frances Drake was not a pirate.”

“Wasn’t he? The Spanish think he was. They hate him. It’s the British who idolize him. It all depends on your point of view. Arthur Rimbaud stopped being a poet to become a gun-runner. Poet, and pirate.

“And you’re quite the pirate, aren’t you, James?” she added sharply. “A woman in every port, weapons, license to kill. _You_ get permission from the British government to indulge in your fun, and that makes everything okay, right?”

He shook his head at her. “It is not fun.”

“No?”

“No indeed, Katherine.”

“I see,” she said, not sounding convinced. They turned and looked at Locque, who was walking toward them after having talked with some low-level bureaucrats, nowhere near the circle gathered around the flamboyant Saddam Hussein in his white coat and tie.

Katherine turned back to Bond then. “You did _not_ ever want to sleep with me?” she persisted.

Locque’s deep laugh reached them, and he drew up close while shaking his head. “Be careful, Bond! There is no way to correctly answer a question like that—it’s a trap. Can you imagine that she, after I took her, asked me if I wanted to rape her out of attraction for _her_ , or to strike at you? If I wanted her more than I wanted to get rid of you? Can you believe the cheek of this woman?”

Bond went rigid with hatred. “I don’t see how this is funny,” he bit out, giving Katherine a chastising look.

Locque pulled Katherine aside and gave her a gentle shove. “Go mix—or pretend to. I know you’re not good at that, but join the crowd and have a cocktail so Bond and I can talk.”

She did.

Locque turned back to Bond. His cool blue eyes appraised Bond’s steely blue. “On the beach, at Corfu,” he began.

Bond exhaled sharply. “Yes, let’s talk about what happened on that beach.”

“Claus and I wanted to talk to you,” Locque said.

“Oh, you wanted to _talk_?”

“Claus pleaded your case. He said that if I explained to you that we were both double-crossing Kristatos to keep the ATAC out of Soviet hands, you would cooperate. Poor Claus—dead from a harpoon in his back!”

“Poor Lisl,” said Bond, “dead from a dune buggy from the back.”

“Poor double-crosser,” Locque retorted, “dead before she could double cross you, Columbo, and the whole western world.”

“You have an answer for everything, don’t you?” Bond mocked.

“Dammit, man—will you even consider for a moment the fact that I want to stave off as long as possible what is to come? I don’t care for ideology, and I don’t care for payment if it means blowing up the world! Do you think that I am as short-sighted as the people that I employ?”

Bond gestured toward Katherine with his thumb. She was sipping a cocktail and pretending to listen to the President. “If you had just left her alone, she would not be in this situation, and what is to come would not come to her.”

“If you had just left _me_ alone, Bond, your government would have had the ATAC back without involving any innocent people, and in addition would have had Kristatos put out of commission, and only at the cost of a few million pounds. Katherine may still have ended up with me, but she would not be entangled with you. And that bites you, doesn’t it—that she may still have ended up with me?”

“You,” Bond replied, “have proven to be fatal to many people, so why not her?”

“You don’t get it,” Locque said, displaying a bit of uncharacteristic pique. “You and I no longer have any quarrel with each other. I’ve explained Ferrara, and Columbo.”

“You have not explained Timothy Havelock and his wife.”

“The Havelocks,” Locque sneered. “You must know that I am not responsible for that. That was all Kristatos. In fact, I almost killed Kristatos myself when I learned of that hit, except that Gogol thought Kristatos to be even more necessary then. Think about it, Bond—what purpose could killing Timothy Havelock serve? Havelock was so close to leading Gogol to the ATAC, so Kristatos kills him _before_ Havelock finds it? And in such as stupid manner, too—gunshots from a light plane, and leaving the daughter alive, who had flown with Gonzalez and could identify the killer? And who, incidentally, could read her father’s notes and get to the wreck before Kristatos could? Do you seriously believe _I_ had any part in that mess?

“That was just plain selfishness on Kristatos’ part. He did it to locate the ATAC himself, when that only wasted more time, because his equipment turned out to be inferior to Melina Havelock’s, and he ended up following her instead of her father. What do you take me for? I don’t kill small fry, 007.”

Bond glared at him in utter hatred. “What do I take you for? You don’t kill small fry? What about Lisl?”

“Maggie?” Locque looked genuinely shocked. “That was business. I thought that you knew that.”

“Oh, I know the story,” Bond replied. “It wasn’t personal? Are you going to look me in the eyes and tell me that that was not personal, not revenge for her jilting you?”

“I would not have said that right after I did it, no,” Locque said. “Up until three months ago I would have said that it was personal—but it wasn’t. As it turns out, I killed her on Kristatos’ orders, just as you originally thought. She was no more use to him, while she was sick of Columbo and wanted to come back to Kristatos, but he wanted her gone. After I killed her I waited to feel her loss, and waited to hate myself, and waited to want death for myself, and I waited. While the CIA held me, I waited. I held out for a long time while those goons worked on me, but I gave in finally and made that deal not because life meant nothing, but because I didn’t care about Maggie anymore and I wanted to live.

“So I took the deal and I took Katherine, and enjoyed Katherine, and still I waited to miss Lisl. I knew that when I finally missed her and regretted what I had done, that I’d free Katherine and skip my mission, and invite death finally from both the CIA and Hong Kong and never see Iraq, but the feeling never came. I waited to want to die, and I never did. All these years I thought that I had loved Maggie. Yet, months later, I realized that I was waiting for nothing, that I felt nothing for her, and that despite the fact that my life is at a dead end I had someone else to live for, a woman worth everything, and I wanted to go on with her, as long as it could last. I still do. And she wants to stay with me, too.”

“Ah, you make me sick!” Bond turned away.

Locque said, “Oh, fuck you, and fuck your self-righteousness, James Bond. I was twenty-one and the woman you knew as Lisl was my lover. I was not a hit man then, but _she_ was involved in drugs, and she ripped off a dealer and tried to have me blamed for it. And at sixteen years old!”

Bond whirled in anger. “I really do not care what you have to say. As you said, I read your file.”

“Do you care what happened to Bunky?” Locque persisted. He nodded when Bond looked blank. “The fool who lost one million francs at Columbo’s gaming tables the night you were there? He blew his brains out, that night. Over her. Bunky was in love with her. She was sleeping with him, too. She slept with many of Columbo’s dupes—anything to get them to shill for the house. I would not put it past her to sleep with some of the female gamblers as well. Hell, I was at the casino that night, trailing you, and after everything she had put me through so many years ago she even came on to _me_.”

Bond was silent, giving no expression or reaction.

Locque swallowed in a way that could have been an act, but his face remained impassive, too. “Oh, _that_ amused her, to see me again after so many years, to see that I was alive—and to see what I was doing, what I had become, who I was working for. She did not know about me, you see, although I had long kept tabs on her. Me, working for Greek smugglers…and for her lover, Kristatos. The cold bitch thought that was hilarious.”

“You chose your future freely,” Bond bit out.

“And so did she.”

“You don’t care about people like Bunky, so save it.”

“And do you? Did you even think of him until now? Kristatos was truthful when he said that Lisl provoked casino regulars to bet more than they could afford. Did you give any thought at all about what that meant for them financially, or how many men’s lives that bitch ruined? How many other women’s dreams she stomped on when she seduced their men—lesser women, truly innocent women? Women like _Katherine_? Do you care about _them_ , Mr. James Bond? How does a working-class girl from Liverpool climb so high that fast, anyway—especially when an honest girl like Katherine had to steal money to get half as far? Did you even care to ask Lisl this while you were boffing her merely to get dirt on Columbo like a pure knight of the realm?”

“I don’t have to listen to this!” Bond turned away.

Locque, however, was not finished. “Did she ask you if you wanted to ‘use her car?’” he taunted. “That was one of her weapons, too. Some men survived. Some did not. Her cars had a habit of blowing up, but not every single time. One wonders which would have been your fate, but at least admit that I saved you from finding out. I suppose we will never know, will we?”

Bond walked away from him.

Katherine was standing outside now, in the garden beyond the French doors at the back, looking like the goddess Ishtar in her veils and jewelry and flowing hair. Bond walked up to her and took her hand. “Katherine, surely you believe that you can trust me. I have no more pretext,” he said, looking into her painted eyes. He was aware of Locque hovering nearby. “I don’t know what to believe, or who, other than you. All I can do is offer you what I came here to offer. Do you want my help?”

“Your help, if it costs lives, would not help me at all,” she replied.

Bond shook his head. “I would take you out of this country. That surely would not harm anyone.”

“Where would you take me, James?”

“I would take you to a ship called the Triana, in the Aegean. I would fly you there, and radio the Triana to head for international waters for the drop-off. The owner is a personal friend of mine—a Miss Melina Havelock—and her late parents were old friends of my employer. Sir Havelock was a marine archaeologist, and Melina is continuing his work, excavating ancient temples on the sea floor.”

“It sounds like a dream,” Katherine said longingly.

“You would be happy there, and Melina would teach you how to scuba dive and uncover underwater artifacts. You could help her catalog them. It’s not so different from your work at the library. Everyone would love you. Say the word, Katherine. Just say the word, and we’ll walk out of here together, now!”

She turned to survey the small hanging gardens, recreations of the once great hanging gardens of Babylon, and sighed. “James, my presence would only endanger the people on that ship. It _would_ cause harm, to others. It could not remain in international waters indefinitely, and both Locque and you have made a powerful enemy in Orlav. I cannot take that chance, and I won’t. You know this, James. If Orlav cannot strike at Emile directly, he would strike at me—or Alain Locque’s enemies would—and whether you believe it or not, either way my death _would_ hurt Emile Locque as much as it would you.”

She stood there so nobly, so calmly, and there was nothing to do but tell the truth. “All right,” he said, “I believe you.” Bond touched her hair. “Katherine, tell me what to do. I am out of ideas. I cannot fight the two of you. If you tell me what I want, I will do as _you_ say.”

“James, if you would free me,” she said, “work to free the others whose enslavement makes men like Locque necessary to the CIA. Help me by helping others. I am all right.

“Make my fellow Americans see Saddam Hussein for what he really is. Expose the tyranny, the ethnic injustice, in Iraq. Once they turn against him, my government will have no choice but to drop him. Ronald Reagan got into office without any help from me, but if you help expose Saddam—or, God forbid, he commits a real atrocity—the American people will clamor for justice, and the President will pull his support for this regime.”

Bond shook his head. “I do not doubt the integrity of the American people, but it simply does not work that way, Katherine.”

“This is not wishful thinking. If you can help create a momentum against this regime, all it would take would be for one senator to stand up and denounce our support for Saddam on the floor of the Senate. And once that happens, the American people will start paying attention, Iraq will get more publicity and the International Court will have more influence. I know that it can be done.

“But Bond, in the meantime, if you want to do me a favor, right now—what I would like you to do when you return to the continent is go back to the estate of Alain Locque and locate a servant names Jens De Vos. He is being held a kind of prisoner there—I don’t know how, exactly. Emile’s father, along with a police chief, somehow caused the murder of Jens’ daughter Jeanette, and they both escaped punishment. He was kind to me, Jens was. He suffers. Maybe your friend, with the ship, can help him escape? Emile won’t tell me what is going on other than that it is dangerous to cross his father, but if you could, rescue Jens from that place. Would you do that for me? Please?”

Bond was aware that Locque had reappeared and was listening to them. “All right, Katherine,” Bond said, and kissed her cheek. “I’ll do what I can. I promise. Goodbye.” He turned and walked down the steps. After a few steps, he turned and called to the tall man at the doorway, “That’s _détente_ , Locque—you don’t want war, and I don’t want war.”


	32. Free

Bond entered his hotel room and checked his watch. He placed the phone within reach and shoved away the complementary martini sitting politely, and anachronistically, on the arabesque mosaic tiled telephone table. Sensing a presence in the room, he whirled with his knife at the ready. “Good evening, 007,” said the middle-aged man as he stepped forward.

“M!” Bond sheathed his knife. “Where the devil have you been!”

“On leave, of course,” M replied easily, sheathing his own pistol. “On vacation.” He waved his hand in the air. “Blah, blah, blah.”

Bond hesitated. He sat down on the bed then, and M sat down in the chair from which he had risen.

“So,” M concluded, “you and Locque have buried the hatchet, and neither in the other.”

“Not at all, sir!” Bond retorted. “I shall win this fight.”

M sighed. “Ahhh, Bond. You must see now that he does have feelings for her.”

“I do sir. I do accept that, and that’s the problem,” Bond said urgently. “He has enough feeling for her to bring here with him, and to live with her and protect her, because he no longer wants to be alone. I know that feeling myself. He told me he feels nothing for Lisl and prefers to be with Katherine. And he will remain with Katherine until his endgame is played out, as he knows that it will, the only way that it can be—with his death. And when he dies, he’s going to drag her down with him. They will die together. That is Locque’s plan.”

M’s intelligent face stretched in horror. It made his inquisitive blue eyes look even wider. “My God, James. Are you sure?”

Bond nodded. He stood up and hefted the martini like an axe but did not drink from it. “Locque has found the woman that he can live with, and he won’t give that up,” he said, pacing back and forth while M watched him. “He cannot see anything but his own need for her. Yes, I am sure, M— _I was the same way_ , when I put Tracy in danger. All I could see was my own happiness, not my wife’s safety. I know that. God forgive me, I know that now.

“Locque is obsessed with Katherine. The rumors that he treats her well are true, M. He is good to her. She has given his life meaning again—the kind of meaning that a man has when he has decided to commit suicide, because he is going to be killed anyway. It’s the kind of calm, certainty and purpose that comes from knowing one’s end is immanent, and that one will never be parted from one’s beloved. Without her knowing it, he is grooming her—grooming her for death.”

At this Bond stopped pacing and turned to fix his employer with a stern eye. He set down the martini again. “Help me, M! Issue me my pistol and restore my credentials. And give me top-level clearance. Give me all the tools that I need to rescue this girl.”

M shook his head. “How will you get her away from him, if she refuses?”

“I’ll find a way. But I must be your agent again to do it.”

M sighed. Though Bond stood impatiently in the middle of the floor, M turned from him in the chair. “Bond—if I restore you, you will lose the aid and protection of Alain Locque.”

Bond’s impatience turned to puzzlement. “What do you mean? Why?”

“Because he is after me, 007. That is why I have been on ‘leave.’ The elder Locque and I are old enemies and have been, since before the war.”

It was Bond’s turn to look surprised. He sat down too to listen.

M leaned forward in his chair. “When I was a young agent myself, I went on the trail of a prolific and shrewd forger. Aside from the usual counterfeit Dalis and Russian icons, this man produced military medals, civilian honors, and even classified documents, especially British ones. It was becoming a national crisis, particularly with England on the brink of war. My orders to get this man came from Churchill himself.

“But I was never able to capture this forger. He was always one step ahead of me. In the end he disappeared behind several layers of false identities and wielded power unseen, unnamed, unlocatable. I was never able to uncloak him as Alain Locque until the _St. Georges_ was sunk in the Ionian Sea.”

Bond nodded, his eyebrows lifting.

“So I disappeared myself, Bond. I had a hunch that this forger was not only still alive, but mixed up with the race to recover the ATAC. As it turns out I was wrong—it was the son and not the father who was involved, but by then Alain Locque had got wind that I was looking for him again. He wanted his son out of the mission with Kristatos, and so ordered Kristatos to tell Locque to kill Lisl. You know, don’t you, ” M added, and there was a wry grin on his face, “that it was Alain Locque who had blackmailed our lady Maggie Evans into being Kristatos’ mistress with the express purpose of her becoming useful later in acting as bait to regain his son?”

“No, sir,” Bond replied, wondering why he had never thought of it; but then, such machinations became more unlikely and unworkable the more complex they were.

“It is usually the case that such an elaborate plan backfires,” M echoed the thought, “but not so with Alain Locque! As I said, he is shrewd. After the younger Locque left the hospital and walked out of his father’s life, Alain Locque tracked down the lady and made her his slave. Kristatos was taken by her and enjoyed her like a toy, then placed her like a ticking time bomb in the path of Milos Columbo, who truly did love the lady.”

“I daresay that she liked me, too,” Bond put in.

“Every woman likes you, Bond. But it is a fact that Emile Locque may very well have saved your life on that Corfu beach that morning.”

Bond sat, blinking in rage to hear this. M continued to watch him. At length, Bond stood up, crossed over to the table, lifted his warming martini, and drank.

#

Locque grinned at Katherine as they entered their own hotel suite. “Once we settle into a permanent home in Basra, I can prepare to strike at Bond before he strikes at me.”

“ _What?_ ” Katherine whirled to face him.

Locque unstrapped his holster and set his weapon on the side table and reached out to help her with her cloak. “Don’t blame me! I did everything I could to make that lunkhead see, but he’s even more stubborn than you are.” He tossed aside her cloak and pulled her into his arms.

She avoided his blistering kiss. “And after everything I did to bring you two together! I’ve failed,” she said. “I’ve completely failed.”

“No—you just changed the conditions of the war.” Locque smiled at her fondly. He drew her closer to him so there would be no escape from his lips. “Welcome to diplomacy, my dear.”

After he finally released her, she flew like a dove down the hallway in her billowing clothes. Locque appraised her with admiration. He had no love for how some Muslim women rubbed themselves out in those black abayas covering their hair down to the forehead and their cheeks and mouths. They looked like ink blots. But Katherine glided on incandescent wings despite following most of their rules. Hennaed hands, what an idea. Some Bedouin women tattooed their faces!

Smiling fondly, Locque threw off his coat and picked up the several envelopes that had been left by the staff on the side table. He riffled through them. Two were letters, probably invitations for Katherine from the wives of other foreign nationals living here, but the third was a telegram. It was addressed to him.

Puzzled, Locque slid his finger into the flap and pulled it open. He pulled out the paper and read.

Locque stared at the telegram, reading it over and over, unnecessarily. An icy weight formed in his stomach at the words:

SHE IS A SPY. KILL HER. TONIGHT.

#

Locque sat up late that night, drinking alone. He wat sitting with his holster strapped to him again—he would never take it off again. Finally, he rose and entered their bedroom, and stood there contemplating the sleeping woman on their bed. Then he sat in a chair and ran his hands across the top of his head, his elbows resting on his knees. He remained in that position for a few more minutes.

He sat next to Katherine on the bed. She did not awaken. Grimly, he sat for a while and looked at her, occasionally touching her hair or her face. He would let her sleep until the time came.

At length he rose, taking a small handheld transceiver out of his pocket. He knocked at the door of the room that belonged to Andre. “Take this, and leave tonight,” he told the henchman, handing him the transceiver. “Wait at the rendezvous point. I’ll summon you.”

Andre paled. “I would rather stay with the Missus, Locque. I want to. I promised to protect her.”

Locque shook his head. “You cannot help her. Go. Do as I say.”

For a moment, he thought Andre would challenge him. Locque placed a warning hand on his gun. Andre backed away, wearing that expression that eventually all of his men wore—but he obeyed.

After Andre was gone, Locque closed the door and headed back to the bedroom.

“Wake up.” Katherine heard Locque’s voice, and felt his hand on her shoulder, shaking her. She hated to be shaken awake, so she sat up quickly. “Come on,” said Locque, seizing her arm. “You’re getting out of here.”

“What is it?” she asked before she thought. He yanked at her insistently. “Wait! I have nothing—”

“Get up!” Locque bellowed at her, and pulled her, naked, from the covers. With his hand on her arm in a steel grip, he walked her out of the bedroom and across the floor to the door. Her toes curled against the cold floor. As they passed the bannister, Locque grabbed the cloak and tossed it at her. She wrapped it around her and they went out into the night.

“Where is Andre?”

“Stop asking questions!” he said.

“You’re hurting my arm,” she said. He placed his hands on her shoulders instead and marched in front of him to the car.

“Get in the back. Go on.”

She said, “I’m scared.”

“You ought to be. You’re in a lot of trouble.”

As comforting as a Moai, Locque was. Miserably, she climbed into the back seat. “You’ll be all right,” he said then, in the same dull voice, “when we get out here.” He got into the driver’s seat and started the engine.

#

Locque drove the dizzying walled streets of Basra at breakneck speed. Katherine lost track of their way. It was like riding through a labyrinth. Finally, the street opened up and they were crossing a wide square toward a large stone building with two tall, rose-colored pillars edged in gold that held up a hexagonal eave flanked by two hexagonal wings. Katherine recognized it as Saddam Hussein’s minor palace but to her it looked like a prison.

Locque drove around to the back of the building, where a small door was guarded by a sullen guard with a Kalashnikov. He stopped the car and turned to look at her over the back of the seat. “It’s over. Get out.”

She sat looking back at him in shock.

He pointed to the palace. “In there, you have a fighting chance. It’s the only place they cannot touch you. Turn on that winsome personality and become some other man’s mistress. Survive.”

“I couldn’t—I can’t!” She looked more frightened now than she ever had. It was Saddam Hussein who frightened her, even more than the CIA did, even more than Locque did. She liked James Bond but would never sleep with him. Sweet girl.

Locque shook his head. “Woman, in this fucking shithole, husbands kill even their wives! I’m sorry, poet, but you and I are through. I can’t protect you anymore. We’ve gambled, and lost. You _can_ do it.” He saw the tears streaming from Katherine’s eyes and reached out to wipe at them. “You have a brain in your skull and the ability to keep your mouth shut, which is better than most women.”

He got out of the car and came around to the passenger seat, which he flung open. She stepped out, however, before he could seize her arm again. She looked utterly terrified. He had truly, deeply frightened her at last, and he could not enjoy it, for what she feared most of all was to leave him. Jesus.

She stood shaking but with dignity on the dusty concrete, looking at that guarded door. The armed man had his gaze locked on her. “I would prefer,” she husked then, “that you kill me instead. Husband.”

She stood waiting, and Locque stood looking at her. After what seemed an eternity he reached out to touch that small, white face.

“You could do that,” she insisted. “You would be doing me a favor.”

“Don’t be stupid. Life is all there is,” he said. “Death is nothing. You can always be dead later. I’m doing you a favor now.”

“ _Not suffering_ is all there is,” she countered. “Suffering is worse than death. If you shoot me in the head right here, it will all be over and I will not suffer, ever.”

Logical girl, too. She had said it so calmly. Locque frowned at her, but he took out his gun. Her eyes locked on it and followed its muzzle, so he moved so that he stood slightly behind her. He raised his arm and held the position, pointing the gun at the back of her head.

“You should put it in my mouth,” she quavered, “to be…sure.”

He swallowed, tightening his grip. He was aware of his breathing, and of hers. She said again, “Put it in my mouth,” but she did not move. She was shaking like a leaf, but trying to control it.

Still holding the gun high, he reached out his other hand and turned her with his hand on her shoulder. She faced him with her eyes closed. After a second, she remembered and opened her mouth. Tears streamed down her face, and her chin quivered.

He was holding the gun close to her face, its muzzle toward the sky, with his hand on her shoulder, looking at that face. She closed her mouth to swallow, then opened it again. Her eyelashes fluttered, but her eyes did not open. His hand tightened on her shoulder, and he watched her trembling stop. Brave girl.

He lowered the gun. His hand wiped the tears from her face one last time. “Doll,” he said, and his voice sounded strange, “fuck off.” His hand covered her face and he shoved her quickly, so that she fell to the ground.

He stepped back into the car and it sped off, leaving her to face the palace servant who had materialized at her side and was boldly assessing the new prey for the party being thrown by the Iraqi President.


	33. Courage

The phone rang. Bond drained the martini and regretted it. “Do you want me to get that?” asked M. “It’s probably Moneypenny, looking for me.”

Bond sighed and set down the glass. “No, let me answer it. Let me break it to Moneypenny I’m not coming back.”

M sat back again and let his raised arms fall to the chair’s arms. “Again?”

Bond lifted the receiver.

“Come get her,” said a deep, cold voice.

“Who is this?” demanded Bond, knowing who it was.

“The post-movie reception at the President’s palace. Come here and get her,” said Locque. “Saddam knows who you are, or were. He thinks you’re a deserter. You can walk right in.”

Bond met M’s eyes across the room. “Why do me a favor, Locque?”

There was a strange sound from the assassin Bond did not recognize. “The favor is for _her_.”

Bond hung up and reached for his coat. “M, I tell you what: don’t restore my credentials until after I have the girl.”

M said, “This is a trap, Bond. As of now, you are again my agent.”

Bond pulled on his coat. “This whole situation has been on trap after another. But tonight, I am going to need the help of Alain Locque.”

“You need our help,” argued M. He stood, reached into his own coat and handed Bond a Walther PPK. “Locque needn’t find out until it’s too late.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

Outside the hotel, Bond hesitated, then hailed a taxi. In this city as in Baghdad, Saddam’s guests were known and accommodated. A car pulled up promptly and Bond entered. No Lotus, no rented car; he was going to need both the elder Locque’s and M’s power for this.

Bond did not have to tell the driver to head for the palace. They were already speeding in that direction.

#

Katherine wished the women gathered around her would shut up. She caught at most one-third of their words, though some managed French and even broken English. She had been pulled into a long room that was like an actor’s makeup room, with seats before the mirrored walls and tables littered with combs and hair fasteners and foundation. Katherine sat in a folding chair before the clutter, fighting tears as a woman patted her face with light powder.

“Don’t be afraid,” said this woman, bending close for her long body towered over Katherine even though she was sitting. “It’s really not so bad.”

“Just smile, and always smile at the President,” said another. “Act grateful you are here.”

“Perhaps he will not notice you,” said the first woman, now daubing the powder beneath Katherine’s eyes as tears threatened. “You being so small, like a child.”

Another woman exhaled in disbelief. “She is an American! Abandoned by her man. Saddam will unwrap her like a candy.”

“Hush,” said another. “You’re frightening her.”

“I’m preparing her. She’ll find out soon enough.”

“Never say his name,” said the first woman to Katherine. She sat back to survey her work on Katherine’s face. “To you he is always, ‘Your Excellency.’”

Katherine looked down at the sparkling gown they had managed to find for her and tugged at the pleats in despair.

There was an announcement over a loudspeaker, like school, or like her father exhorting his crew to get ready for a broadcast. The women all filed out the door, their eyes on the shorter woman among them. They walked down a hallway and met an attendant and a guard. These men accompanied the women to an unremarkable door in a rather shabby wall.

This door opened on a sumptuous ballroom. Katherine, in the middle of the line of women, felt the eyes of men on her as she entered. There were banquet tables heaped with food and smaller tables scattered about with men sitting and smoking and talking. Katherine saw a wet bar with two bartenders in tuxedos, and on the stage, near the podium, President Saddam Hussein lifted a whiskey glass to his smiling mouth.

The women, all smiles too, went to the tables to converse and flirt with the men. Katherine stood awkwardly and looked around. Incredibly, she saw Locque—he was standing to the right of the stage, his holster visible, his eyes sharp. She stared at him, but just slightly he shook his head at her.

“Katherine,” said a voice behind her.

She turned but could not find a friendly face in this crowd. She was aware that President Hussein was looking in her direction and tasted acid. Then a man rose from his table and pushed forward his chair, indicating it. She stumbled toward James Bond.

His hand landed on her shoulder, steadying her as she wobbled as she sat. “You’re all right. Sit and catch your breath. The President will want to talk to you, and then we’re getting out of here.”

Having just relaxed, Katherine stiffened again. “I don’t want to talk to Saddam Hussein!”

“Look, play along,” Bond pleaded. “Just for a half-hour. I know it’s hard, but we cannot insult him. It’s almost over.”

Grimly, Bond played along too and danced with other women. Katherine sat and watched him, and then she rose too and danced with Bond before any other man could approach her. Bond whirled her expertly around the dance floor as the loudspeakers played a romantic Egyptian pop song, and then there was a tap on Bond’s shoulder.

“Cutting in,” smarmed the Iraqi President. Bond stood back and Saddam Hussein moved his full lips at Katherine, but all she heard was Jens’ voice: _Courage_.

#

Locque stood, guarding the stage and the podium and the throne, and watched the Iraqi President sweep his wife away from Bond and twirl her around the dance floor to the tune of a low waltzing cover of a song made famous by the Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum. Katherine recognized the song as the same music Qasim Bayoumi had played in the background that first night, her first night in his house. It was strange that these nations shared so much culture and yet made war on each other, or perhaps both Iran and Iraqi favored the culture of Egypt and denied what they both shared. It sounded like the situation between James Bond and Emile Leopold Locque.

“Your Excellency, I would ask you a question,” Katherine said mischievously as Saddam Hussein swept her along. She nodded to the two men, the assassin standing and the former secret service agent sitting at the table. They were now glaring at each other. “I trust your opinion, sir,” oiled Katherine. “Two men are in love with me.”

The Iraqi President gave her a face-splitting smile. It was simultaneously repulsive and contained more warmth than she expected. “Well, my dear, I can sympathize. Two men are in love with _me_.”

It made her laugh. She and the President both laughed, hanging on to each other, as she saw Locque walk over to stand next to Bond, who looked baleful. After a moment, Locque sat in the chair opposite Bond and they both watched Katherine.

“They are my guards,” snickered Saddam Hussein, “but neither is your husband, never fear. Although you and he are quits—do I understand correctly?”

“You do, your Excellency. But which of those two men do you think cares for me more?” She smiled in the direction of Emile Leopold Locque and James Bond.

Hussein had a jolly-sounding, himself. “I would say that, if neither of them is fools, both in love with you.”

“Well, they have both broken my heart!” Katherine proclaimed, raising her voice. It carried across the crowded ballroom and some people turned to look at her. “They both seem,” she announced to Saddam Hussein, “to be more enamored of _each other_ than they are willing to put my best interests first. My God, I became so tired of hearing one talk about the other, complain about the other, constantly mention the other.” She smiled at the dictator, who laughed in turn. The dictator was eating it up.

“James Bond, this; Emile Locque, that,” griped Katherine. “Bond did this that irritated me; Locque did that which angered me. I swear, they cannot love without each other. What are those two—lovers?” She laughed along with the dictator.

Now the dictator appraised her outright. “Perhaps you need a third lover.”

Bond looked steely, watching her. Katherine knew he was waiting for his chance to bolt with her, but Locque’s face now wore the ghost of a smile, an expression that she interpreted as _Attagirl!_

“Your Excellency, do you know what I would like to see?” she deflected flirtatiously.

Saddam Hussein looked eager. “What, my dear? Tell me what you would like to see.”

She dropped his hands and turned to face the two men at the table. Again, her voice rang throughout the room. “I would like to see these two woman-killers _make out_!”

Katherine laughed, and Saddam Hussein laughed, and laughter erupted from the other dancing couples and from those sitting at nearby tables. Even the bartender blushed and laughed. Some of the guards’ faces twitched, but others remained stiff and inhuman. Katherine made kissing noises in the direction of Locque, who was laughing now as well. His eyes came alive in his face and actually twinkled at her in his mirth. Bond, however, sat stonily.

“I am game; what do you say, James?” Locque teased his taciturn opponent.

They both sat watching Katherine dance with Saddam Hussein.

“We were all wrong,” Locque said to Bond, “all of us—every single one of us. We had pieces of the puzzle but there was more than one puzzle. None of us saw that we were on the same side—none, except for my father. He is the one who saw things as they really are and turned you and me against each other. If Gogol had sought an agreement with him, my father would have accepted it, but Gogol did not reach out to him. My father doesn’t care. He only wants to be on the winning side.”

Bond grunted impatiently. “I have never known any man to want anything else.”

“Listen to me, Bond,” said Locque. “Do you want to know why I ‘disowned’ myself? It’s a lie. My father never cut me off. When I passed the point of no return and was making a name for myself in this business, a reputation as an enforcer, my father came to me. He was _proud_ —he wanted to retain me. Retain me as a hit man! He wanted to hire me and have us both rule his criminal empire as father and son.

“But I refused. I did not want to work for my old man. And now, here I am, trapped, working for a monster even worse than my father. I would not be in this position if I had not refused my father—and you and she would not be here now.”

Bond stood up and strode decisively toward the couple. “Cutting in again, your Excellency,” he said, and Hussein courteously stepped aside and bowed to Katherine, then left her to dance with Bond again. Bond held Katherine tightly, whirling her as Locque watched. “Katherine, bear it just a little longer. I am going to take you out of here soon.”

“How did you get here, James?”

“Locque himself brought me here. To rescue you.”

She shook her head at him as they danced. “But I cannot go with you until I accomplish something first. I am on a mission too. I would have been so better off if you had talked to Locque when I asked you to, James Bond!”

Bond’s brown furrowed in anguish. “Oh, Katherine. I should have listened. I should have trusted your judgment long before it came to this.” The both looked over at Locque, who was watching Katherine’s movements as if memorizing them. “Lisl’s death so blinded me with hatred—it has to do with the death of Tracy—Teresa, my wife. That was my fault, my fault, and I felt I had let down Lisl, too.”

“Did your wife betray you, as Lisl did Locque?”

“No, she did not betray me, but she was the daughter of Marc-Ange Draco, the head of the Union Corse.” Seeing Katherine’s confused look, he added, “It was a powerful Corsican crime syndicate long ago.”

Katherine smiled at him, then. “So _you_ married a crime mogul’s daughter, and _he_ chooses a librarian. Locque is right—you and he are very similar.” Bond smiled a little at her in answer.

“My wife Tracy was killed. By a criminal mastermind whom I subsequently killed.”

“I know that, James.”

Katherine did not say any more, and Bond exchanged a glance with Locque. The Ba’ath Party henchman was sitting as still as ever, watching them. Bond also saw the Iraqi President leave the dance floor and whisper in the ear of one of his many female attendants. The women smiled and left the room, and Saddam Hussein mounted the stage and walked to the podium.

“Time to go,” Bond said in Katherine’s ear. Katherine looked over at Locque again and thought that she saw him nod ever so slightly.

“But I cannot,” she said, pulling away.

Bond would have caught Katherine’s arm to march her quickly to the door, but a huge man, obviously a member of the Ba’ath Party’s police force, stepped in front of it. Bond drew up short as men placed themselves in front of all of the exits to the room. At a nod from Saddam Hussein, these doors were pulled shut, each with a sounding slam. Alert, Bond looked around, drawing Katherine close to him.

Saddam Hussein held up his hand. “It is my grandson’s birthday!” he crowed, and turned to present a tall man, an elegant young woman, and a child held by the woman. “Happy birthday to Yaqub Qusay, the firstborn of my firstborn son, Qusay!”

The audience burst into applause.

Katherine and Bond watched as a huge cake was wheeled before the young boy to blow out his two candles. The child puffed and the candles went out, and there was more applause. Saddam Hussein’s son beamed like his father as the cake was cut for the boy, and the woman rubbed the boy’s cheek and nearly wept with joy. She didn’t look Iraqi. Katherine, without quite knowing why, wondered if she was Turkish and if the dictator Saddam Hussein actually approved of her.

Pieces of cake were distributed among the tables, so Katherine and Bond sat down and stared at theirs. Locque too looked perturbed, frowning at the guards standing before all the doors. Katherine fidgeted, wishing to be free at last of this uncomfortable gown and the hidden metal _jinn_ in the pleats, the weapon the woman who had done her makeup had given her.

“I don’t like this,” Locque said to Bond as the mother exited the stage but Qusay and his young son remained. “Saddam Hussein used to take Qusay to executions when he was a boy. Beginning when he was two.”

Katherine looked quickly at Bond. His jaw tensed, Bond nodded.

Back at the podium, Saddam Hussein threw up both his hands. “How many of you enjoy Agatha Christie mysteries?” His question was met with silence. Katherine exchanged a puzzled look with Bond. “I _love_ them,” the dictator gushed. “I love Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple. And Sherlock Holmes, by Conan Doyle. I read at least one mystery per week. What I especially love is the ending, in which the detective closes the room on a group of people—a group of suspects—and unmasks the criminal in front of everybody. It is called a locked room mystery. Therefore I have locked this room.”

Bond’s face turned into an angry mask, his eyes alert, his body assuming a stance that readied itself for action. The hair prickled at the base of Katherine’s skull. She was aware how Locque drew himself up. Hussein’s benign smile swept the room and paused in her direction. “And tonight, in this room, among these guests, I shall do the unmasking. Honored guests, there is a criminal among us. A traitor, good people, is here—here to kill me in my own palace.”

She and Bond exchanged a glance.

“A traitor!” announced the despot. “A Kurdish spy, right in my palace. I have tried to work with these people, to unify our country, to bring peace—but the Kurds plot against me. They wish to assassinate me. I welcome everyone as guests, I bring Europeans into my fold, but bribed by the Kurds, they turn on me like wolves! Two of them died tonight, near the canal. The third will die in this room, here, now.”

 _Oh, James!_ Katherine’s lips formed the words, but no sound came out. Her hands stopped grasping the gun hidden in her dress. Her skin felt hot, then very cold, and she felt as if everyone was already staring at her when they were not. Bond’s stance did not change. Locque turned and gave Katherine a look she had never seen before—a harried, hurt, enraged, and living look. Even he, of all people, had not known until now.

Saddam Hussein left the podium and took a few steps forward, and his gaze now focused specifically on Katherine. He motioned with his arm and four large, stout men left their places at the perimeter of the room and started toward her. Katherine’s pulse raced, and she was weirdly aware of every sound, every one of the footfalls from Hussein’s thugs, and she was riveted in fear, unable to move from her chair as the four men bore down on her.

“Long live Iraq!” bellowed Saddam Hussein. The crowd repeated it obediently, shouting so that the words echoed. “Long live the Ba’ath Party!” he blared, and the crowd repeated that, too. Katherine realized that she was standing. She was slowly backing up, pathetically, in small mincing steps, her hands waving incoherently near where the pistol hung beneath her pleats. Her entire body shaking so badly that her head was jerking.

The four armed men reached her.

They passed her. They continued to walk toward Locque and Bond while she stood gaping at the Iraqi leader’s beatific smile. It was only then that time seemed to slow down for her. Bond stood up and came protectively toward her. He placed a hand on her arm and turned, and she turned, too. Locque was facing both of them, still sitting at the table.

The four Ba’athists had lined up behind Locque at their table. As Katherine watched with Bond, one of the thugs planted his hands on Locque’s shoulders. “What a pity,” lamented Saddam Hussein. “I don’t have many men with your talents, Emile Locque. I took you into my _home!_ ” He shouted the word. “Where my _grandchildren_ play! But Kurdish messages, Kurdish treachery! I do not like to kill, but it is forced on me. Saja Al-Basri, Mustafa Al-Basri, and now you.”

 _Oh, no!_ Katherine mouthed. She turned in utter panic toward Bond. “No, no—he couldn’t have—”

“Not a word, not a word, Katherine,” Bond whispered sharply, gripping her tightly. The lines in his forehead answered her staring eyes. “Be _quiet_.”

Locque sat and regarded Katherine with a new look, a sad and very wise look. Then the Ba’athist thugs dragged the assassin to his feet. The dictator onstage motioned, and the four men yanked Emile Leopold Locque across the floor in front of everyone. The assassin was not looking at her, or at Saddam Hussein, but he seemed to steel himself. The crowd regarded him over their cocktails and cake as if he was an entertainment. Katherine could not stop shaking. She felt Bond’s hand on her arm, his thumb stroking it. Then she felt his pull. He was leading her slowly toward one of the doors, abandoned now that Hussein had unmasked his traitor. All eyes were on Locque.

Katherine pulled away from Bond. “Stop.”

The pain in the former agent’s eyes was terrible. “We must take this chance, Katherine.” Bond’s voice was hoarse, and there was no enjoyment in it.

He reached for her again but as if in a dream, Katherine began to walk away from him. Her body felt stiff and sore as if she had been beaten, but she aimed her body at the dictator on the stage and marched toward him. Bond’s hand ripped at her arm and she flung it away. Her head was bursting and she could barely see.

“I demand,” she said, and realized how close to Saddam Hussein she had come; he towered over her. Her hand was balled in a fist next to her temple. She seemed to have lost the ability to form words. “Your Excellency. Do not take your prisoner from this room. I demand the right, as a guest in your home, the wife of this man who was your guest too, to witness the execution! I demand to see the traitor killed.”

 _Katherine!_ she heard Bond’s voice as if it came from inside her own head.

Saddam Hussein was looking at her in fascination and smiling.

“I have a right to watch him die,” Katherine asserted, finding her tongue. “I am the one he kidnapped. He raped me and shamed me. Because of him, my father disowned me. Even my own country doesn’t want me anymore. Locque has ruined my life in addition to betraying you, and I insist upon seeing his execution!”

“Listen to the lady,” said a male voice in the crowd. “Listen to the wife!”

Saddam Hussein beamed outright.

Bond sidled quickly up behind Katherine and said into her ear, “Are you mad? Come away with me, come away, now!”

“I want vengeance,” Katherine said to Saddam Hussein’s hateful smile. “I demand it as a guest in your country, and so does James Bond. It was James who tried to kill Locque for his crimes, and had he succeeded, I would have never been victimized.”

“It’s so,” mused Saddam Hussein. “It is only fair that you two watch Emile Locque die.”

James face was frowning, but Katherine’s glowed in triumph.

“Let’s all watch it!” crowed the dictator. With a motion of his hand, Locque was dragged to the center of the room. The men threw him to the floor face-down, and Locque quickly scrambled onto his back. Katherine could not look at Locque’s face, and she did not know if her captor and husband looked back at her. She could only focus on an arm, or a leg of his.

Bond was watching though, with rueful eyes. The crowd gathered around to watch—out of fear, or fascination, out of boredom or spite or even pity, or simply because it was expected of them, Bond could not guess. Qusay and his son stood on that stage with the patriarch of Iraq, and the birthday boy giggled a little.

Four other men approached to hand each of the thugs around Locque a long-handled weapon that Katherine did not recognize. “I have often wondered,” said Saddam Hussein at the stage, “how many cattle prods it takes to kill a man. My ministers say they cannot kill, only wound. I have a bet with them.” He smiled. “I am prepared to lose.” He motioned again with his hand, and the Ba’athists lowered their cattle prods to Locque’s body.

Bond was watching Locque suffer. He had seen many of his enemies die and had been the killer of most of them, but this was the most ugly, gruesome display that he could possibly imagine. He threw out an arm to Katherine, who was ashen, and was backing up with her hands to her ears as Locque shrieked in agony from the electric prods. Two women and a man in the audience had already fainted. Bond knew Locque would not die from this; it was torture. This was sadism, pure and simple. It was monstrous. Katherine had collapsed forward and was clutching her right thigh. She tore at the pleats of her dress.

“Katherine, come away with me now,” Bond pleaded, but she strode in front of him now and turned again to face the dictator. Bond reached for her, but she had already pulled, inexplicably, unexpectedly, unbelievably, a pistol from her gown and was aiming it right for Saddam Hussein. The first bullet struck the dictator in the shoulder. The next missed him entirely. Then the third bullet caught him squarely in the chest near the heart, or where the man’s heart was supposed to be.

Saddam Hussein convulsed. He was thrown backward. The retort of Katherine’s gun launched it from her hands, and Bond could see that the left side of her face was red; she had held the gun too close to her face. She covered her eyes and stumbled.

 _Allahu Ahkbar!_ screamed a voice from somewhere, and the phrase was echoed and repeated by many other voices, but it was nothing like the cattle-like repetition from the guests—these were the voices of strong-minded men shouting, along with the cries of a few bold women. The Kurdish nationals had appeared from behind tapestries and separated from the throngs of servants to fire upon the dead dictator and his guards.

Bond leaped forward and, grabbing the back of Katherine’s gown, dragged her to the floor. Gunfire erupted all around them. Before his eyes, the body of Saddam Hussein was safely riddled with bullets by three other armed men, the ones who had just shot Locque’s torturers.

Locque’s screams subsided, and instead Bond heard Katherine’s sobs. The faulty and primitive pistol had spewed power along her face, and he wrapped her in his arms. “Listen to me,” he said in her ear, “I know it hurts, but we’ve got to get out of here, now. Crawl as fast as you can in the direction I shove you.” She obeyed, and he dragged her to the safety behind some huge concrete planters.

One of the Kurdish rebels was supporting Locque, who was struggling to reach them. With the Kurd’s help, Locque managed to pull himself beside Bond. Bond looked for an opening in the gunfire. When he turned to check on Katherine, he saw Locque protecting her body with his. His hand closed over her small white one.

Bond hesitated, then let Locque tend to her and said to the Kurd, “We cannot stay here much longer!”

“We have a car waiting for you outside,” said the man. He pointed at Katherine. “Mustafa was my cousin. Get her outside and we will get you out of Iraq. I’ll cover you.” He rose up and fired his gun.

“Now,” said Bond to Locque. He could tell the assassin was in great pain, but he rose to his knees and so did Katherine. For the first time, Bond reached out and grasped Locque’s arm. The three of them stood up in the pandemonium and ran for a door being held open for them.


End file.
